I’ve been using AI tools seriously in my creative work since early 2023. Not experimenting — actually using them, on real client work, every week. I want to give an honest account of what that looks like, because most of what gets written about AI in creative industries is either breathlessly optimistic or defensively dismissive, and neither is particularly useful.
What AI has genuinely changed
Speed of production, dramatically. Work that used to take a day now takes an hour. Work that used to take a week now takes a day. Not because quality has dropped — because the mechanical parts of production have accelerated almost out of existence.
This matters most in the iteration phase. Historically, a client wanted to see three directions. You showed them three. They asked for changes. You came back in two days. The rhythm of a project was largely determined by the cost of iteration.
Now iteration is nearly free, in both time and effort. I can show a client six directions, get live feedback, and produce refined versions inside the same conversation. The relationship between the brief and the finished work has compressed in a way that genuinely changes what’s possible.
AI also helps with the blank-page problem. Not by generating ideas wholesale, but by providing a starting point that you then destroy and rebuild. The first AI output is almost never the answer — but it collapses the distance to the answer, which is often the hardest part of any creative task.
What it hasn’t changed
The thinking. Entirely, completely, not at all.
AI cannot tell you what a brand should stand for. It cannot identify the insight that makes a campaign worth running. It cannot understand the specific tension between what a client says they want and what their customers actually need. It cannot read the room in a client meeting and understand which piece of feedback matters and which is noise.
It also cannot make taste-level decisions. It can generate competent execution at speed. It cannot generate the specific, considered aesthetic choices that make a brand distinctive. That still requires a human with genuine expertise and a developed point of view.
The practical result is that AI has changed what I spend time doing — less time on production mechanics, more time on thinking, strategy, and refinement. Which is, frankly, where the value was always concentrated.
What this means for clients
For Incognito’s clients, the practical effect is better work, faster, at the same cost.
We’re not charging less because production has got cheaper. We’re delivering more — more iterations, more directions, more refinement — within the same engagement. The value of working with experienced people hasn’t decreased; it’s just that experienced people can now do more with the same time.
The warning I’d offer is about the opposite scenario: AI without the experience.
The cost of producing mediocre marketing content has dropped to nearly zero. That means the world is about to fill with mediocre marketing content. Brands that invest in genuine strategic and creative expertise will stand out more, not less, in that environment.
AI is a tool. In the right hands, it’s a remarkable one.
The hands still matter.