AI – WHO’S IN THE DRIVING SEAT? PART ONE
Early Creative Sector AI developments are bringing financial benefits but little competitive advantage or serious policy change. Real progress requires a shift of mindset.
PART ONE of this RethinkCreative series looks at the early stages of AI implementations in business and policy. The next part will look at the use and development of creative apps and their implications for business and policy. And part three will consider the issue of jobs, diversity and fresh creative ideas.
Artificial Intelligence has made big inroads across the Creative Sector, both in terms of business efficiency and increasingly in creative production, but generally without clear strategic direction.
Consultancy giant McKinsey, in its 2025 report Seizing the agentic AI advantage, notes that AI is so far mostly focused on what it calls ‘horizontal’ applications, making savings and increasing the efficiency of existing business functions.
The most common of these applications are Chatbots and assistant Copilot tools. Rethink Creative interviews suggest Creative Sector companies are using these tools for a wide range of tasks in areas such as marketing, press releases, application writing, translation, and research.
Many small-and-medium-sized independent companies that make up much of the sector, have found that AI assistants have freed up time to spend on more business-critical creative work. In a small number of cases, entrepreneurs and content creators have established a foothold in the sector with minimal staff costs and low overheads.
Savings have generally been made by reducing spending on freelance skills, rather than cutting core teams, exacerbating problems in what is fast becoming a creative Gig Economy.
The speed of the AI advance has been helped by the fact that, unlike so much previous disruptive digital change, users do not need to acquire specialist coding skills. Indeed some coding may soon be obsolete as AI becomes more self-sustaining.
THE RETHINKCREATIVE TAKE
◊ Prompt strategy should focus on widening the context of inputs.
◊ RethinkCreative workshops will focus on the value and values of AI implementation.
◊ Our Prompt Deck approach builds a mindset of curiosity and questioning.
◊ The right business group offers better outcomes in the next unpredictable stages of AI.
Most Creative Sector companies are comfortably integrating AI tools into their operations (with a surprising number ascribing a human name to their digital assistants.) That lack of disruption and the immediate savings are the reasons why so many are getting into the game.
But these early implementations are not translating into competitive advantage, or pointing the way to sustainable policy.
As MIT Sloan Management Review notes:
“Every serious technical advance ultimately becomes equally accessible to every company. Personal computers, the internet, semiconductor fabs, blockchain technology, genetic sequencing — these technologies are no longer competitive advantages for any organisation.“
McKinsey suggests AI will come into its own when these applications acquire more autonomous agency, able to be much more engaged in the creative process.
The evolution of AI remains unclear.
AI applications are still at an early stage and are likely to follow the same hype curve as every previous digital trend – over-excitement, followed by irrational disappointment before finding their level. At the end of 2025, many AI developments are already in the disappointment phase that IT consultant calls the ‘trough of disillusionment’.
The longer term development of AI will be still less predictable, even to the AI pioneers who are pushing its development.
What matters now and for the future is that creative businesses and policy-makers ask questions, creating a culture of rigorous self assessment, which is where Rethink Creative can make a serious contribution.
The future of AI will be about an adaptable and agile change mindset.
