AI Isn’t Freeing Creatives, It’s Erasing Them

I have said similar things in previous posts but with more layoffs in the creative industry recently, it is worth reinforcing the fact that if we keep pretending that AI is “freeing creatives to be more creative,” we won’t have an ad industry in two years.

What we will have is an efficiency machine pumping out an endless scroll of generic, soulless content wallpaper that nobody wants to look at. Creativity, the messy, human, culture-making kind that built this industry, is being gutted under the polite fiction of “progress.”

And we’re letting it happen.

The Lie of “Democratisation”

Tech companies love to frame this shift as democratising creativity. That’s a nice line for a press release, but let’s call it what it is: commoditisation.

When everyone has access to the same AI tools, trained on the same datasets, you don’t get a flourishing of creativity, you get a creative monoculture. You get ads that look like they were designed by committee in a beige conference room, all sharing the same uncanny, plasticky aesthetic.

AI rewards sameness because sameness scales. And sameness doesn’t sell.

Advertising works when it surprises you. When it makes you laugh, cry, or think differently. When it punches through the noise. You can’t get there by asking the same algorithm the same prompt 10,000 other marketers used this morning.

The Human Multiplier

Advertising has always been powered by irrational magic, ideas that shouldn’t make sense on paper but work in the wild.

A gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins. Apple’s “1984” spot that almost didn’t air. Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” filmed in one impossible take.

These weren’t data-driven inevitabilities. They were human leaps of faith, lightning-in-a-bottle moments born of creative instinct, risk, and trust.

Yes, AI can churn out content. But content isn’t culture. Content is filler. Culture is what makes people stop scrolling. And if we hollow out culture, we hollow out the entire business model of advertising.

The Freelance Trap

The irony? The same companies laying off thousands of creatives are now calling freelancers to fix AI’s sloppy work.

That’s like hiring Picasso to clean up paint spills.

If you fire your entire creative department and then send the scraps to freelancers for Fiverr wages, you’re not innovating, you’re exploiting. And you’re burning the very talent you’ll need when you eventually realize AI can’t write your Super Bowl ad.

The Industry Self-Destruct Button

Here’s the part nobody wants to admit: none of this is inevitable.

Every mass layoff, every pivot to “AI-first,” every quiet decision to replace a creative team with a prompt engineer, it’s a choice. Agencies are making that choice to juice quarterly earnings at the expense of the very thing that makes them valuable: people who can invent, provoke, surprise, and connect.

WPP, Omnicom, IPG , they’re not future-proofing. They’re hollowing themselves out. And if the “product” becomes pure AI-powered efficiency, clients will eventually cut them out entirely and go straight to Meta, Google, or OpenAI.

Agencies are literally automating themselves out of existence.

What Real Resistance Looks Like

This isn’t a time for polite industry panels. It’s a time for pushback:

• Militancy: The Hollywood writers proved it, organize and set boundaries. Creatives can’t keep quietly accepting their own erasure.

• Client Courage: Brands have to stop buying beige. Safe work doesn’t move culture or move product. If your agency shows you an AI-generated campaign, ask what they’re adding beyond what you could get from a $20/month tool.

• Agency Backbone: Stop dressing up layoffs as “innovation.” If you fire thousands of creatives, you’re not innovating, you’re gutting your business.

The Existential Threat

This isn’t just about saving jobs, it’s about saving the industry itself.

If creativity becomes just another interchangeable commodity, the ad business doesn’t just shrink, it disappears. The power consolidates into a few tech platforms and AI vendors. And when that happens, it’s game over for agencies, freelancers, and independent creators.

The Closing Punch

So no, I don’t buy the AI utopia fantasy. AI won’t free us. It will erase us, unless we push back.

Advertising was built on human madness, human instincts, and human stories. Rip that out, and you don’t have advertising anymore, you just have algorithms rearranging pixels.

And nobody is lining up to watch an AI-generated Cadbury gorilla.

...and yes I used AI to make this header image, why? Because it is funny to me I guess.