The CWA Eye: Hey Siri, what’s your thoughts on artificial intelligence?

Here at CWA, we’re no strangers to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and our team is currently seeing more and more AI tools being used as machine learning goes up a gear.

If you’ve been following CWA’s The Eye, you’ll know that our Housemates have predicted a boom and below we discuss how AI can be best used.

We sat down with some of our AI advocates here at CWA to deep dive into their thoughts on the future and what it could mean for our companies going forward. And after speaking with them all it seems we’re all in agreement, AI should enhance us, not replace us.

A little help goes a long way

It’s rare anyone will say no to an extra pair of hands. Dave, our video master, believes we can utilise AI to help us in our day-to-day life: “AI gives us the potential to ensure our experts' skills, time and enthusiasm are used at things they do best. Whether that is creativity, problem-solving, or logical thinking, AI can take away some of the more mundane/repetitive tasks. This ensures they feel challenged and fulfilled at work, allowing them to shine and continue to create great solutions for our clients.”

Although agreeing in the main, Creative Director Martin, was keen to emphasise: “AI should be viewed as a tool to assist and enhance the creative process, not as a replacement for human creativity and decision-making.”

What can AI mean for our clients?

AI is already being used across many of the sectors we work in and being able to adopt it for our day-to-day work from design to video is already starting to enhance our ways of working.

Dave said: “It’s important to note that the use of AI across the construction, automotive, and rail industries is still in the early stages of development, but for us, it’s becoming a part of day-to-day life.”

Martin, along with Karl our web-wizard, discussed the way they’ve already been able to adapt AI and where they expect it to go: “In design we’ve managed to utilise AI for research purposes, it’s a quick way to use text AI to get audience insights, it’s helpful to kickstart inspiration for campaign creatives when brain-storming. We can also use it for outpainting, this is a way of adding extra elements to an image beyond its original crop. But it’s important to keep an eye on the ethical aspect of AI in design, like avoiding biases. You need to ensure that you use data that is diverse, inclusive and fair.”

Karl added: “In digital AI can be used across a range of different programmes, it isn’t something we currently use, but in future, it could help with form submissions to effectively rule out spam submissions, to shift through large amounts of marketing data that would otherwise be sorted manually and to do real-time personalisation on web pages and adverts. There’s a lot to be explored with AI in the digital space and we look forward to diving in.”

CWA’s overarching thoughts on using AI this year:

• Don't be scared of AI: It's not here to steal our jobs, but it can help you make them more rewarding. AI can assist with repetitive tasks, but it should not replace our creativity and decision-making.
• Understand the capabilities and limitations of AI tools: Familiarising ourselves with the AI tools available and their specific capabilities and limitations, so we can use them to their full potential and avoid disappointment or frustration.
• Not everything that is AI is labelled as AI: You might be using it now without knowing it. But be mindful that whilst it is very useful, it isn't perfect and isn't always the solution when compared to human instinct - so for now, use it with caution!

Catch up with the full series of CWA The Eye on our social media channels now. And if you currently planning your marketing or event calendars, don’t be shy in reaching out to us. We may have an extra pair of virtual hands to help out… drop us a message.