Voice Over (00:00):

Welcome to the Taylor 10. A fast-paced, 10 minute deep dive into the minds of those shaking up the marketing world, bringing you the sharpest insights, boldest ideas, and breakthrough trends driving the industry forward. So tune in, get inspired, and stay ahead.

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Bruno Forcine (00:18):

Hello, I'm Bruno, and welcome to the Taylor 10. I'm here with Tony Jones, co-founder of Creative AI Academy, to learn as much as I can about AI's role in shaping the future of creative work in only 10 minutes. Welcome, Tony. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I guess we'll just jump right in. Maybe if you give us a little bit of a summary of how you got into co-founding the Creative AI Academy. You have a background in advertising, but you have a really long history of ai, which is rare, especially from a creative background. So whether it was like innovation labs or prototypes you've seen perfectly suited to address the topic of ai.

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Tony Jones (01:06):

Yeah, that's true. I mean, you and I worked together at McCann for many years. I was there for 15 years in the most recent years as a SVP group creative director. But during that time at McCann, we were also doing digital innovation for our clients. So we were doing workshops in which we would help them to identify new ideas and using thinking methodologies to create new businesses based on a brand's mission. And so along that path with that offering, we created some really interesting products on behalf of the clients since one of those products, or actually a few of those products were actually AI enabled, but AI enabled in 2016 is a different definition. So that was creating a voice interface for a customer service platform for the postal service, or creating a shoe insole that could detect changes in your walk if you're a Parkinson's patient to try to help you prevent from falling over.

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(02:05):

So those were exciting applications of ai, but those were using either algorithmic algorithmic predictions or natural language processing. But nonetheless, I did have a great experience using those tools. And what was different back then, and what's great now is I used to have to have an engineer between me and an idea. So the work we were doing was creating ideas and having and working collaborative with the devs and engineers to make those things happen. When 2022, when chat GPT came out, I would suddenly be able to speak directly to the ai. I was able to generate ideas and generate content and generate anything really, and wrestle with these things without having to rely on that engineer.

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Bruno Forcine (02:55):

And something that I feel like you said relates to that well, where rather than making the idea for you, it forces the user to zone in on what point you're trying to make. What is your idea is now there's more onus on the user rather than you're not typing in Chapu Chi, like what is my idea? But you're looking to bolster your idea. So ideally creatives can focus on making their ideas sharper and what am I trying to achieve before using these tools to kind of strengthen it, right?

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Tony Jones (03:29):

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And we knew who used chat BD for the first time or uses even midjourney or for the first time you're like, well, that was crap. Well, I dunno what the whole hype is. This thing is not, this is boring, this thing's not very clever. I've heard this before. I've seen that before. Or there's seven fingers, whatever it is. Yeah. But did you spend any time thinking about what you were asking or thinking about what you were trying to find? Did you break it down into steps? Right. So if I were to ask Chad GPT to write me a content calendar for a brand, it's going to give me 30 days worth of social posts, and now I'm going to have to spend all that time going through those and fixing all the things I forgot to tell it

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Bruno Forcine (04:07):

At large. What are you seeing is the big difference that you're seeing of creative work and supported by ai? What is the shift that you've seen?

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Tony Jones (04:17):

Well, so far the shift is slower than I'd expect, but at the forefront are the creatives and the strategists are really pushing the boundaries of these within our world. The slowness, I think is from C-Suite and above or the other departments. It has to be a cultural shift for a whole agency, not just the department that's doing the execution or on the tail end of a brief. And then I'm also found that as people become more proficient using it, that the depth of the ideas is getting deeper. You're doing a mood board that's going to take you half a day to put together, and then you're still not sure of what you really like, but now you can do four mood boards in the matter of two minutes with the right prompt, and now you have four different directions to choose from.

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Bruno Forcine (05:05):

Even to your point, as it pertains to a mood board or clients want more exact numbers on their kind of ROI, they also want to see things look more realistic. If they're going to buy an idea of a custom app or a piece of merch that's custom or a collab, what would that look like? They want to see really as closest to reality as what it can look like to buy that idea or that look and feel. So I think it takes it to that more realistic degree where if I'm sorting from images and I'm hoping that someone has created that image before in a way that I can resell, creating something new for Midjourney definitely feels more pointed and allows 'em to see the vision a little bit more clearly, which is nice.

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Tony Jones (05:52):

But also be careful that the clients start to see, okay, well go ahead and do that. You're like, well, executionally or practically, we might not be able to do this. So make sure that we're not too far down. But I think in the creative process, when you have more choices, it's always better. And then even upstream with when the client is working with the strategy team, they can dive deeper on research much quicker, can push against different insights much quicker and have more variety. And because someone who is an expert in understanding how to build out a strategy, they can ask the right questions and argue back and forth with GPT, and so suddenly you can see the quality of those briefs getting improved as well. So it's all about really, it's all the person operating the tool is really what makes it sing.

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Bruno Forcine (06:39):

I guess that's one of the more common, I guess, hesitancy is that people try a prompt once or twice and they fact check it and it's wrong. But you have to continue to refine your approach and that's what's going to get you the good results, I guess. Who's someone who's equally interested in tech and also hesitant about using it, I guess, what are the other misconceptions you could dispel for creatives or worried about these tools infringing on their role?

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Tony Jones (07:15):

Well, on their role themselves, I think that you need to prove that you're the best at using this tool. So again, whatever inherent skills you have when you're opening up Photoshop like this two years ago, are still your skills. You're still on the hook for the final product. You're still putting your name on whatever comes out. So no matter what tool that was, now people say, oh, well, it's just a tool. Yes. But it's a little bit more than that too because if you really start to use AI more naturally, it becomes a partner with you. It starts to understand what you're looking for, and you start to understand how to tame it, right? It's kind of like a horse almost, right? It's fidgety. And sometimes it doesn't listen. Sometimes it does, but you start to get a sense of how you can do that. So those who are concerned about their roles should say, how do I bring AI into my role and into my life so that I can become a more powerful version of what I bring to the table?

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Bruno Forcine (08:14):

I guess if we talk about using ai, we want to make sure that we're approaching it kind of ethically. Do you have any best practices maybe for using AI in a more ethical way?

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Tony Jones (08:26):

One thing I do with my class, I'm an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute as well, and we have in our design certificate, AI design course, we have a chapter on ethics, like a good two classes that are just focused on ethics. And I have all my students use AI GPT that I built that actually interviews them about their feelings about certain things, data bias, IP theft, is it too easy? What about the end of the world? What if it turns us all into paperclips, all those, and it actually interviews you? And then it comes out with a recommendation for what are the 10 commandments of your personal point of view on using AI? And I find that is really helpful for everyone to say, okay, this company, this company stole everyone's IP to create their model. Well, this company is doing a little better, and then my company is using it this way and this way, but me personally, as an end user, how am I going to be ethical about using it? So asking yourself those questions as an end user will really help shape the way this goes in the future when everybody has their own personal safety measures, right? Again, now we all have licenses to drive Ferraris, right? So who's going to be careful on the road or not be careful on the road? So we need to consider how those organizations are, how powerful those tools are they're providing us, and what they are doing to be safe and smart, but we as end users also need to be at the wheel.

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Bruno Forcine (09:52):

Thank you so much for the tips, and thank you for the time. I'm sure I'll be reaching out with many AI queries soon.

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Tony Jones (09:59):

Of course. Thanks.