How can we use artificial intelligence to make space for human creativity?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to benefit the creative industry, offering new possibilities for innovation, collaboration, and productivity. But, used in the wrong way, it also poses a significant risk to the integrity of creative work. In this blog post, Brett Harris, VP of AI Enablement and Strategy at SGK – parent company of leading packaging design company Equator – shares the agency’s approach to exploring the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence.
Much has been made of the threat posed by artificial intelligence to the creative industries, so it’s hardly surprising that some resistance to this technology exists. But, as the saying goes, ‘Minds are like parachutes; they only function when they are open’. So, at Equator, we have opened ours and started experimenting with AI. Through a cautious, inquisitive approach, we hope to better understand this technology, harness any efficiency gains it may offer and mitigate any risks it may pose.
We are exploring potential benefits across four key areas: consumer insights, creative exploration, quality control, and production processes. Our experience so far reveals that, while there are several issues to be ironed out – from hallucinations and poor treatment of brand equity to copyright and confidentiality concerns – AI does provide ways to cut through more mundane, process-driven tasks. This frees up our teams to do the valuable creative thinking and unique creative work that are so intrinsically human.
Consumer insights: unlocking the power of data
At Equator, we prioritise understanding our consumers to uncover creative insights and help us measure the impact of our creative work. By exploring the use of AI in consumer insights, we are testing ways we can leverage it to analyse consumer data, including demographics, preferences, behaviour, and feedback, to generate valuable insights that inform our creative strategy and execution. Additionally, we are starting to employ computer vision and sentiment analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of our creative output, such as images, videos, or ads, and map it to consumer responses and sales performance. This data-driven approach will enable us to continuously optimise and refine our creative work, ensuring maximum impact.
Creative exploration: a world of possibilities
Generative AI design and language tools are opening up new horizons for creative exploration. By leveraging this cutting-edge technology, we envision generating variations of our original creative concepts and quickly bringing moodboards to life, allowing us to mine images faster than ever before. This approach would empower us to build on our ideas and test different options swiftly before developing the final creative through our traditional studio model, which also safeguards our clients’ IP. While we are still exploring these possibilities, early feedback from our creative teams suggests that they appreciate the potential of generative AI to enhance their focus on higher-value inputs and strategy around design, as well as aiding in real-time ideation. Crucially, our creative teams will always be in control, making decisions and driving the creative process.
Quality control: ensuring consistency and accuracy
Consistency and accuracy are paramount in the creative industry, and we’re exploring how AI can help us uphold these standards at Equator. We are developing innovative AI solutions to compare our creative output against briefs and previous projects, ensuring alignment and maintaining high standards. This proactive approach allows us to refine our work continuously, enhancing the overall quality.
Production processes: streamlining and automating
AI is proving to be a valuable tool in streamlining tasks within the production process, such as in-painting, generative fill, colour correction, object placement, upscaling, and even pre-press functions. These processes involve manipulating and enhancing images, videos, or other media, and can be time-consuming. We are actively testing how AI can assist our teams in working through these tasks faster and more efficiently while maintaining high-quality standards. Crucially, our creative teams remain in control, directing and managing the AI output to ensure it aligns with our vision and requirements. We believe this approach will eventually allow us to scale up our production capacity, enabling us to meet the ever-increasing demands and expectations of our clients.
Artificial and human intelligence: a partnership
At Equator, we are excited to continue exploring both the opportunities and challenges presented by AI, using it as a tool to enhance our creative process, ensure quality and consistency, and streamline our production processes. We believe that AI is not a threat to human creativity but a partner that can shoulder lower-value, process-driven work to make room for creatives to do what they do best. Of course, there are considerations around its safe use, and we have focused on ensuring data protection, the commercial rights to use these AI models, and alignment with our AI policy. Most importantly, we are committed to being transparent on the use of generative AI tools and ensuring that as necessary we have our client’s alignment before using them for publishable work. With these guardrails in place, we are optimistic about a future where AI and human creativity work in harmony, delivering exceptional results for our clients.
For more information on how Equator’s creative teams can help you realise your packaging design and branding ambitions, get in touch.
