Human-what?
You probably heard the term “Human-Led” or “Human in the lead” when it comes to generative AI, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. You - the human - are in the lead role when it comes to using any AI tools. This is the best way to work, as it gives real human oversight to the project, instead of simply farming AI tools for content.
And as Spidey taught us, with great power, comes great responsibility. These are some of yours:
Prompting. The brief is more important than ever, and what you put in will determine what you put out. Your responsibility here is to understand the purpose you are pointing your tool towards, so you can determine when you’ve hit the mark.
Quality Control. Even when you write the perfect prompt, you might get results that are less than perfect, and even worse, some of it might be just plain wrong. All of these tools are trained on data that undoubtedly contains biases. From words that generate way too-sexy looking people to text generation that is just plain lies, you need to check the output with a critical eye. Even if it looks amazing and perfect on first glance, zoom in, fact check and make sure that anything you present is work you stand behind.
Brand fit. Even if a machine knows your brand, you know it better. Using prompts that take your brand voice, values, image style, etc into account should get you close, but again, you’re the expert. Make sure it sounds, looks, feels like your brand. And don’t be afraid to rework it if it’s not good enough. You’re not hurting your robot friend’s feelings by reworking their output.
Transparency. If you generated an image on Midjourney and it became the inspiration for the imagery you’re using in the campaign, be open about it. Keep the output and show your work. If you generated all your social posts with Jasper and then edited it to make it work - great! That’s what it’s there for. Make sure you keep track of where and how you used generative AI in your process the same way you would keep track of stock imagery, fonts or any other documentation
Vibe check. AI is amazing at recognizing patterns and predicting what comes next - and generative AI has taken that to a whole new level. But YOU are a much better creative. Never forget that. You understand emotion, and how to create real connection. This is why you are in the lead, and can never be replaced. This is where you shine - make sure that the work you are putting out is something that draws on shared human experience. On emotions that AI can’t synthesise.
As it gets easier to pump out content, people are (shockingly!) going to take advantage of it. Content farms, shady shops working for small (and sometimes large) clients who don’t know any better and a bunch of brand new "marketing experts” are all rushing out right to flood Google and Meta with a lot of pretty mediocre content to drive up rankings. The quality of work is going to be pretty crappy when humans aren’t involved other than inserting a few prompts and churning the results straight online, or turning the results into click bait.
Which makes it more important to do the work the right way, like you always do, and create work that differentiates. That connects to real purpose and isn’t just empty words or images. Using generative AI tools to augment your creativity can help you to get your ideas down more accurately and quickly, which is awesome. Just make sure you are using it like any other tool. But do feel free to say please and thank you when you use it.
