Industry Perspective on AI
RAPP's "A Wish for Why"
Source: Screen shot from RAPP Instagram.
One of the most urgent trends reshaping advertising today is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). No longer a distant concept, AI is already embedded in the tools, campaigns, and debates that define the industry. For creatives, this shift brings both opportunity and anxiety—AI can accelerate workflows and spark new ideas, yet it also challenges authorship, originality, and the role of human imagination in advertising.
My earliest usage of AI was when Adobe rolled out their generative AI feature in Photoshop. I have leveraged this tool extensively when expanding curated stock imagery to be more adaptable to different layouts in print or digital. What once required hours of manual work can now be achieved in minutes. This efficiency highlights the reality of AI: it is no longer a theoretical disruption, but a practical, everyday tool shaping creative workflows.
Beyond tools, agencies are also beginning to experiment with AI at the campaign level. Towards the end of 2024, after a year of major restructures, our Chief Creative Officer (CCO) Troy Hitch produced with his team a holiday greeting video for clients titled “A Wish for Why.” The piece humorously explores “what happens when the magic of AI goes awry,” using satire to spark conversation about the role of technology in creative storytelling. This project demonstrates how agencies can use AI both as a production method and as a cultural commentary, showing clients that we are not only using these tools but also reflecting on their implications.
From everyday tools like Photoshop, to large-scale agency campaigns such as “A Wish for Why,” and even independent experiments like the AI-generated comic Zarya of the Dawn, it’s clear that AI is reshaping advertising at every level. Zarya in particular illustrates the ethical tensions surrounding AI—while celebrated for its creativity, the work also faced backlash and legal challenges over copyright and ownership. This case underscores the unresolved question of what it means to author creative work in an age when machines contribute significantly to the output.
AI is forcing advertising to evolve on every front—changing how creatives work, how agencies tell stories, and how the industry defines originality. While its rise is messy and challenging in my own professional context, it also creates an opportunity to rethink authorship and push creativity in new directions. For me as a creative, the task is not to resist AI, but to learn how to shape it thoughtfully—so that technology expands what we can imagine, rather than replacing it.
