After garnering over 12,000 users in just five days, an AI tool named ‘The Uncreative Agency’ has been revealed as the handiwork of none other than George Strakhov, DDB EMEA’s chief strategy officer.
Having launched on 27 January, the tool generated widespread interest and international media coverage. With two creative proposals currently being produced every minute, The Uncreative Agency seems to have indisputably captured the industry’s attention.
Developed by Strakhov’s team at NORD DDB, the agency’s new initiative invites users to submit a short, one-sentence brief – after which the tool will generate a unique creative proposal in minutes, with no human interaction and zero budget.
Although the agency admits that the product is still very much in its infancy, with the ideas produced unlikely to revolutionise the creative process – the tool does nonetheless signal the pivotal role that AI will play within the creative industries over the coming decades.
“The knee-jerk reaction from our industry is always to say that AI can never be as creative as a human. But having worked with AI for the past 5 years, I believe, this view is short-sighted. It’s like saying that your intern in the creative department is never going to be creative, because currently their output is a little random,” Strakhov said.
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“But if we work with them, if we listen to them, if we believe in them, train them, brainstorm with them… can they be a vital part of a team that produces an amazing idea? Absolutely yes. It’s the same with AI. Great creativity can be born out of randomness. We just need to work with it.”
The initiative will now form part of DDB’s wider hybrid creativity platform RAND, which will leverage existing and upcoming AI technologies to provide a truly 360 consultancy service to its clients – from research and ideation to production and analytics.
RAND’s launch comes at a time of heightened interest around the impact that AI will have on the creative sector, with much of the discussion centred around the ChatGPT copywriting tool which took the world by storm late last month.
DDB EMEA president and chief executive Glen Lomas added: “It feels natural for us to dive head first into the potential of AI. Our founder Bill Bernbach changed the way our industry works by being the first to combine art and copy.
“Alongside his early creative partner, Paul Rand, they would visit galleries and museums discussing how the two worked in harmony. Now we are building on their legacy by exploring how humans and machines work in harmony.”
