Everyone wants to talk about AI replacing creative directors. Nobody wants to talk about what it's actually like to use it on a Tuesday afternoon.
So here's the boring version.
I run a small creative agency. Seven people. We make films, brand work, docs. And I've spent the last year building AI into how we work. Not replacing anyone. Just... plumbing. The unsexy infrastructure that keeps a small business running when you can't afford to hire the people a bigger company would.
Here's what my AI actually does on a typical day: triages my inbox, preps briefing docs before client meetings, pulls together research when we're developing a concept, drafts internal emails I'd otherwise spend twenty minutes on. It reminds me about things I'd forget. It reads meeting transcripts and surfaces the three things I actually need to act on.
None of that is a headline. None of it is threatening anyone's livelihood. It's more like having a really organised mate who's always awake and never forgets anything.
But here's where it gets interesting.
The same tools that handle my admin have started touching the creative work. Concepting, pre-vis, first-pass scripts. And I've noticed something: the output is always competent. It's never bad. But it's never the thing that makes you lean forward in your chair either.
Last week we were working on a pitch for a documentary project. The AI gave me a treatment outline that was structurally sound, well-researched, covered all the right beats. I read it and thought: this is exactly what a good creative would produce if they didn't care about the project.
That's not a criticism of the technology. That's a description of its limits.
The treatment we actually sent was built on a conversation I had with our editor at 9pm where she said something offhand about the subject's hands. How they moved when he talked about his kids versus when he talked about his work. That observation became the structural spine of the whole piece. No tool would have found it because no tool was in the room, reading his body language, feeling the shift.
So that's where I've landed after a year of this. AI is extraordinary at the hundred small tasks that used to eat my day. And it's average at the one task that actually matters.
The craft is still the craft. The boring stuff is where the machines earn their keep. And knowing which is which? That's the job now.
Until next week,
Sammy