With fearmongering headlines declaring that AI is coming for your job and killing creativity, it comes as no surprise that many are left feeling concerned about the potential impact of AI on the industry.

The cultural backlash against Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ad was juxtaposed by the fact that the ad was actually one of the most effective holiday spots. While the award-winning O2 campaign, which saw an AI granny take on scammers, shows how, when used creatively, technology can be used to combat societal issues. 

There is no denying that questions remain around the ethics of AI and its tendency to perpetuate stereotypes. The industry is facing tough challenges and needs to have difficult conversations to ensure that, while embracing technology and using AI to its full creative potential, it still has the courage to challenge its pitfalls. 

In an industry obsessed with the new and the next, as the metaverse closes its doors and NFTS are a distant memory, it is important to remember that AI has the potential to have a lasting, transformative impact. With this in mind we asked industry experts, is the marketing industry too negative about AI?

I think the marketing industry can be too negative about AI, but more importantly, I think it is often negative about the wrong things.

Too much of the conversation still swings between fear and hype. Either AI is positioned as the thing that will replace creativity, or it is sold as a silver bullet that will solve every challenge overnight. The truth sits somewhere far more commercially interesting.

AI is not replacing marketing. It is rewiring how it works.

We are already seeing it reshape discovery, search, content production, measurement and increasingly commerce itself. Consumers are moving from browsing to prompting, from searching to asking, and eventually from asking to delegating. That changes how brands need to show up.

The bigger risk is not AI itself. It is organisations continuing to optimise for old models while consumer behaviour is shifting in real time.

At Cheil, we see AI as an accelerant for connected commerce, sharper decision-making and deeper personalisation at scale. The real opportunity is not volume, it is value. Not more content, but more resonance. Not more automation, but more intelligent systems that free up time for strategic thinking and better creativity.

The industry should be less focused on whether AI is good or bad, and more focused on whether we are genuinely ready for the structural change it is driving.

As an industry, we are simultaneously too cynical and too easily impressed when it comes to AI.

We seem to collectively swing between two extremes - blind hype and blanket dismissal. Neither of those things allow us to approach AI with the nuance that it needs. We should absolutely be sceptical of tools with stunning demo reels that promise revolution, only to deliver mediocre automation at best. As an industry, we have a duty to hold AI companies to a higher standard and challenge the hype.

But cynicism also has its own cost. AI is already reshaping production, craft and more broadly the entire marketing landscape. Writing it off entirely, simply because some outputs fall short of our expectations, is just as limiting as over hyping it.

We must become better at calling out what's genuinely valuable and what's just noise. Not all AI tools are equal and not all outputs are acceptable. The bar shouldn't drop simply because these tools are making us faster. Now is the time to be discerning.

As an industry, we must be united on one thing - we won't accept slop. We must use AI with intention, ensuring human guidance and guardrails at every stage.

Let's set the bar high, and keep it there.

AI does introduce real risks, so the industry’s caution isn’t entirely misplaced, from a lack of clear regulatory frameworks to its inherently borderless nature. It needs serious attention from governments, not just marketers. But moving away from regulation, in practice, AI is proving to be a solid creative and operational tool when used with thought and planning. What it sometimes exposes (rather than replaces) is the difference between thoughtful strategy and surface-level execution.

We’re already seeing homogenised outputs (i.e.“that sounds like ChatGPT wrote it”) where AI is used without clear direction. The distinction will be between those who rely on AI to generate ideas and those who use it to develop and enhance them. 

AI is less a threat to creativity than a test of it. I’d bet that upcoming Black Friday marketing collateral will have a lot of similar-looking contenders.

That said, while creativity may be tested, there are legitimate risks to certain operational roles. As AI tools enable brands to produce more outputs themselves, such as social iterations of lead creative and campaign reporting, expectations may shift towards delivering more for less. We as an industry need to keep reminding brands why a well-thought-out execution serves better than something done cheaper. Ensure that the sign off is given by marketing teams, and not by financial officers, which is already the well-known plight of marketers. 

This is also likely to create new opportunities for those who can help organisations use AI effectively, combining industry expertise with a practical understanding of the tools.

Someone said ‘You won’t be replaced by AI. You’ll be replaced by someone who’s better at using AI than you’.Which sounds smart, but it’s only true for some people. The sorcery of AI means that fewer humans need to be involved, and paid. And what do you think is the bigger driver of progress, economics or compassion?

The AI negativity isn’t about it doing adminny-type legwork, except from the adminny-type people. It’s mostly about where, and how much, it should be involved in the creative work.

‘Ah, aha…, AI couldn’t have written Guinness Surfer!!!’ creatives have eagerly said. To which someone recently replied that ‘unless your name’s either Tom Carty or Walter Campbell, nor could you’. Harsh but true.

By rights, AI stands for the ‘Average of the Internet’. Ask it to do your ideas and its benchmark is as much ‘average’ as it can find.
 So, anyone that’s been happy to churn out low-bar, space-fillers can be as negative about it as they like, but they’re going to get bush-pushed by it.

AI is the new, fully automated sausage factory of advertising. The Finance Director loves it. The Head of Quality Control has left the building.
 And actually, I’m all for that.

I’m all for the big agencies nailing their supply capabilities, keeping their shareholders happy and stepping further away from the ability to create attention-grabbing, persuasive, brand-defining ideas.

Because that’s helping establish the growing value of the smaller, more creative agencies. The ones that are also enthusiastic about AI. But quietly. And not to cut costs. To give their people brilliant depths of insight into whatever they’re working on. And to get to great ideas quicker.

So yeah. AI. Bring it.

Not a single answer from any of my esteemed peers is answering this question without using AI. Yes, every single thing you are reading in this article was written by AI. And if any of you fellow contributors disagree, feel free to get your AI to write me an angry message.

So who cares whether people are negative. It is here, and it is here to stay. AI is not removing creativity, it is removing friction. It is speeding up ideation, sharpening execution.

AI would never have come up with this idea to call out my fellow contributors for using AI. That part was mine. AI just helped me write it out.

The real divide is not between humans and AI, it is between marketers who adapt and those who stall. The ones leaning in are producing more, testing faster, and learning at a rate that was not possible before.

The ones resisting are still writing the answer to this question, and will probably send it in next week. 

Please remove all hyphens to make it look like I wrote this.

The marketing industry’s cautious, pessimistic narrative around AI reflects real growing pains, but much of the negativity stems from a failure to adapt legacy business models, not a failure of the technology itself.

Concerns about implementation are justified. AI is a transformational shift, forcing marketers to rethink tools, processes, creativity, and compliance. Disillusionment is understandable, especially with an estimated 95% of GenAI pilots failing. This often happens because companies rely on generic tools that work in demos but break under complex, real workflows. Raw Large Language Models aren’t ready-to-use products - they require significant customisation to deliver real business value.

Fears around creative quality are also valid. Many marketers have been disappointed by AI’s visual and creative output. Because AI enables rapid content generation, there’s a risk of flooding audiences with mediocre “content soup.” At the same time, human anxiety is slowing adoption as skills must evolve faster than many are comfortable with.

However, the industry is overly negative because the technology itself is no longer the main barrier. We’ve moved beyond the hype into a phase where the real obstacles are outdated processes, rigid hierarchies, and siloed teams. AI also challenges the traditional agency model - selling time becomes a flawed incentive. Success now depends on focusing on output quality, not billable hours.

Ultimately, AI will elevate marketers rather than replace them. With content no longer scarce, human judgment, strategy, and taste matter more than ever. By automating repetitive work, AI enables more personalised, meaningful brand experiences. The marketer’s role is shifting from managing a manual factory to orchestrating a strategic, AI-powered system.

The marketing industry’s increasingly negative perception of AI is easy to understand; the technology is evolving rapidly, headlines are filled with disruption, and the implications for jobs, creativity, and business models feel immediate and unsettling. 

But much of that negativity is being shaped by a single, intertwined dynamic; that AI is exposing longstanding inefficiencies while also being used to justify addressing them, through cost-cutting framed as 'transformation'.

Many companies are positioning restructures as AI-driven change. In part, that’s true. AI is accelerating shifts in how work gets done. But many of the underlying challenges are far from new. Complex organisational structures, overlapping capabilities, and inefficient workflows have been part of the industry for years. What AI does is bring those issues into sharper focus. When automation can deliver faster, cheaper outputs, inefficiencies that were once tolerated become far more visible and far harder to defend.

That visibility creates pressure to act. Streamlining teams, consolidating functions, and reducing costs become more urgent. Yet because AI is the catalyst, these moves are often framed as responses to technological disruption, rather than as overdue operational fixes. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.

Seen this way, AI isn’t simply a threat, it’s a mirror. It reflects the parts of the industry that were already under strain, while also offering a convenient narrative for change.

If AI is to restore its reputation, it won’t be through promises of efficiency alone, but through how it’s applied; less as a justification for cuts, and more as a tool to fix what it has exposed and genuinely improve how marketing works.

The industry loves a villain, and right now it’s AI.

From panel debates to LinkedIn threads, the tone can feel overly negative. But haven't we seen this pattern before with every meaningful shift in marketing of the last fifty years. The difference this time is that AI isn’t coming, it’s already here,  which makes outright resistance feel slightly beside the point.

What matters more is how we use it.

Because there’s a quieter risk emerging. AI is incredibly good at giving fast, plausible answers. The danger is that it can seduce you into solutions and train you to stop thinking for yourself as quickly as you can say 'chat bot'.

I’ve seen it first-hand working on creative briefs. The AI outputs are clearly competent, but the thinking lacks genuine human insight. It isn't able to join dots in lateral, culturally informed or holistic ways; and it naturally defaults to what already exists.

And that’s the point. AI builds on the past. Human creativity is all about moving things forward.

In a world where most audiences are still human, that distinction matters. Clients aren’t just buying speed, they’re buying originality, judgment and ideas that feel fresh and even redefine the world around us.

So by all means, use AI. Just don’t let it do your thinking for you.

Because the real risk isn't technology. It’s an industry that loses the ability to think for ourselves.