Oh, Artificial Intelligence, You Rascal

Since ChatGPT launched we’ve been subjected to endless, breathless hype about what AI can do—and all the ways it’s going to turn the world upside down.

The things AI can do well include:

• Acting as voice-controlled virtual assistants

• Recommending purchases on Amazon

• Detecting financial fraud

• Guiding autonomous cars (although, not so great…yet)

• Running customer service chatbots

• Handling facial recognition for law enforcement

• Writing copy—the use case that’s launched a thousand college professors into a panic spiral

But in the creative world—the world of brands and branding—a real debate is raging:

Could AI actually replace creative directors and brand managers in building winning, culture-shifting brands?

Creative directors, you can stop threatening to throw your Keurig machine out the window. Brand managers, you can climb out from your under-desk fort built from reams of printer paper.

Because here’s the truth:
  While AI is great at repetitive tasks—and could make brand building easier and cheaper—it can’t create passionate visionaries.

Sorry, AI.

AI is Great at Repetition. But Brands Are Built by Outliers.

Humans thrive in the messy middle.
Ambiguity, serendipity, wild ideas that come out of nowhere—this is our native language. Not AI’s.

As Sunny Bonnell, Co-founder of Motto®, puts it:

“Many brands spring from hypotheticals, random thought bubbles that cause two adjacent synapses to fire in unison—or sometimes, pure mischief.”

Consider Casamigos Tequila.
Actor George Clooney and his friend Rande Gerber didn’t set out to build a billion-dollar brand. They just wanted a tequila they could drink all day in Mexico without the er, aftereffects.
It wasn’t until a distiller forced their hand (and licensing paperwork) that Casamigos became public.

Could AI have dreamed that up? Not a chance.

Creativity often comes from mischief, intuition, and pure happy accidents—things no amount of machine learning can replicate.

What AI Can Do for Branding

Let’s be clear:
AI isn’t useless in the branding world.

In fact, once humans invent the breakthrough ideas, AI can help execute them with serious firepower.

Because strategy is largely linear and predictable.

Take Old Spice’s iconic 2010 campaign:
“The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” starring Isaiah Mustafa.

Before those ads even ran, Procter & Gamble had followed a predictable, repeatable strategy:

• Expanded the product line

• Gave out free samples at schools and sporting events

• Positioned the brand with younger audiences

An AI could have helped draft that strategy.
(Though the human wit and humor behind Mustafa’s ads? Still pure human genius.)

So Can AI Make Visionary Brands?

Not yet.

• Humans are brilliant at turning memes, nostalgia, and cultural chaos into something unexpected and iconic.

• AI is amazing at executing predictable patterns, drawing conclusions, and automating the boring parts of strategy.

There’s a future where both brains—human and machine—coexist in the creative bullpen.
But the visionary brands?
They’ll still be human-made, spark-driven, and maybe just a little mischievous.