“Nothing That Any Human Would Ever Be Able to Fathom”: The Unstructured Possibilities of Generative AI

Anthony> A year ago people were baffled by the hype cycle. It was so new and so fresh, and we were all adjusting to 'oh my God' moments - doing things that you never thought you could do, trying this, trying that, experimentation. There were a cornucopia of emerging startups in the space, more and more platforms. There was so much excitement about it. I would offer that a year later the excitement is still there, but there's a little bit of nervousness or trepidation, perhaps a feeling that this is actually going to be much harder to implement than we ever thought possible. 

Anthony> I feel like many of the conversations during Cannes this year were focused on making it real, and where to start to do that - because it's obviously full end-to-end workflow that it can influence - and likewise, how to mitigate risk. The lawyer has come into play considerably. In many ways, that's just making sure the models that businesses use, the way in which they deploy them, and the mechanisms for how they integrate it, are creating the accuracy that they need to increase the value and de-risk the implementation. 

The other part of the conversation is its migration from large language models and mass knowledge into smaller language, agent-based models, and hyper specialisation of certain functions. Themes of machine-to-machine have come up as a mechanism for speeding up the processing in certain decision points across workflow and in other areas of marketing. So, I think the conversation has evolved rapidly. In summation, everybody knows that they can't ignore it - it's definitely not hype. You get on board, you get excited about it, and I think the opportunity is going to work out in your favour. Choose to continue to fight it, and it might not.

LBB> About a year ago, I said something like, 'prompting is the new paintbrush'. The reality is that the way in which we've adapted to the tools has been rather rapid, because I think in general, creative people are very adaptable in exploring new channels and mediums and the tools that go along with that. What we've been doing at Razorfish is effectively creating levelling moments and allowing people sandboxes with which to play with tools that we officially approve of. It doesn't mean that in their personal lives or in the non-work environment that they're not exploring many, many more, but we have some official sanction tools that we give them unlimited access to that they can play around with. We're still working through some of the commercial notions of what that means relative to the application against client work, but we've been levelling up now for about a year-and-a-half. 

Anthony> AI, classically, is structured. Gen AI, classically, is more unstructured. It works more like, maybe, the human creative brain. What I've been fascinated about, certainly after talking to some people that are more of a voice of authority in the space, are new artforms that can be explored with this. We live in a world where we're all taught structures and the structure of things give us rules to guide our creativity by . But sometimes those structures, honestly, can limit us. What we've seen in various different industries is that when you remove some of those structures, you get a sort of omnipotent power and intelligence. There are solutions and there are outcomes that come out of it that are just like nothing that any human would ever be able to fathom. But I think, as soon as a human sees that, then they know that that's a possibility, and then they adapt. I think it's going to go back to the starting point of co-creator and co-collaborator, and there will be moments where it'll swing maybe a little bit more towards AI authority. Then we will learn from that and adapt to it, and then we take that and use it to our advantage, and it will just bounce backwards and forwards. 

Anthony> Gen AI, in my mind, is an enabling tool. I think that there are almost more profound things coming in experience and communication that will impact specifically our industry. Gen AI enables us to act with more precision, discern more kernels of truth out of massive amounts of data, and be able to figure out behaviours and respond to them quicker. You'll be able to bang out images endlessly against one-to-one personalisation. But I think the experience layer is going to be a piece that we will also adapt to. 

I'm still very hopeful for AR, XR and MR. I think that's going to have a profound impact on the industry because how you communicate, how you tell stories - stories that people step into, very much unstructured nonlinear stories - is going to be really difficult for people to wrap their heads around. We're very good at adapting to tools. But adapting from being a narrative storyteller where you like the story to unfold in a certain way, versus a game designer, where there's a beginning and you could say there's an end, but there's a multitude of ways in which you can get from point A to point B. That's really what's coming with AR, MR and XR. 

Anthony> I think that there's a whole bunch of other components that haven't even been determined. There was a moment in time, pre-IAB, where the internet didn't have standards for ad units, and it was sort of like the Wild West. I don't know whether we have any standards for how everything can become a media opportunity to launch some communications piece or some narrative or some experience that could layer into that because everything can become a trigger. So, who owns that experience layer? How do we use it to our advantage to tell stories? Might there be regulations and legislations about it? You could walk around Paris, and you might not even see Paris anymore. It could just be like covered in ads! Or wayfinding or a bunch of other stuff. 

I think things like that will have a profound impact. And there's a broader set of technologies that I'm enamoured with. When fully autonomous vehicles come into play, what do you do in the vehicle? Do you just sit there browsing your phone? Or do you do something else in the vehicle that becomes part of the entertainment knowledge base with which you can use that time in a completely different way? There's a cornucopia of things that are coming down the pipe.