Welcome to the Age of CreAItivity

In a well-known short story called EPICAC, a computer is tasked by a hopeless romantic narrator to help him write a poem that would get Pat (his fellow mathematician) to accept his marriage proposal. The computer, EPICAC, obviously does not understand what ‘love’ is but is given enough data input by the narrator to understand what the emotion means. EPICAC then outputs a poem, which earns the narrator a kiss from Pat, who believes the poem was written by a human. The twist is that the computer has now fallen in love with Pat, to which the narrator explains that computers and humans cannot be together; EPICAC ends up destroying itself but not before outputting 500 love poems.

This story was written way back in 1950 by the brilliant Kurt Vonnegut, who was always ahead of his time. One part of the story always gets me. It is the troubled computer asking the narrator why it can’t be with Pat, because after all, “I write better poetry than you do.”Plenty has been said about how AI will transform creativity, both from a hopeful perspective and from dread. I tend to view it as another tool in the toolbox of what we use to develop work, and much like stock imagery did not make brilliant photographers redundant, AI will not affect those who are at the top of the creative game, except to aid them in production. Why? Because humans will always have an upper hand in generating emotional insight.

Here is a good example of what I mean – a case we launched earlier this year. Lebanon has not had a president since 2022. No fewer than 13 parliamentary sessions to elect a leader had failed, paralysing the country as it continues to free fall towards becoming a failed state. The country desperately needed informed and objective leadership, which it has never had, as each successive president and government has acted in their own personal and political interests.

For nearly a century, in an unwavering commitment to journalism’s role in fostering a fair and democratic society, our brand partner AnNahar newspaper consistently pressured politicians and governments for change and reform. Given this context, BBDO set out to leverage 90 years of reporting to demonstrate that objective and rational leadership is possible and launch an initiative the local political elite (and the world) could not ignore – and instead, must learn from.

To demonstrate that impartial, objective and rational leadership is indeed possible, we built the world’s first generative AI model specifically designed to aid the government. Using 90 years of AnNahar’s unbiased reporting as data fed into a large language model (LLM), we built the world’s first ‘AI President’. A generative AI system was designed to enhance decision-making by synthesising historical and current data to generate potential solutions to the challenges facing Lebanon. Never before in Lebanon’s history had there been a figurehead with such extensive knowledge of the country’s past coupled with objective and rational decision-making skills, devoid of corruption, bias and any political or personal agendas. An informed voice of reason amid divisive counterproductive political rhetoric.

The system was trained by sourcing image scans from every single edition of AnNahar, counting up to more than 30,000 editions. At the heart of it was a product demo. We demonstrated the value of AnNahar’s impartial reporting in building a fair and democratic state. This also made a poignant point to the Lebanese and the political elite: leading Lebanon rationally and objectively is completely possible when decisions are informed by the country’s past and unencumbered by political affiliation and personal biases. And we did it through the use of AI.

The AI President has been able to catalyse tangible change on the ground. Government officials have actually used it in cabinet sessions to help build better directives and shape more successful policies, providing unbiased, data-driven insights and solutions to the challenges being debated and shaping the course of the meeting’s discussions.

For AnNahar, a brand that is not afraid to take bold steps, this campaign resulted in the highest readership in its history. More than 200,000 responses have been generated to date. The physical edition, written completely by the AI President, sold out in a few hours, and website visits increased by 31%. Subscriptions grew by 28%, directly linked to this campaign. Covered by several global media publications,the AI President garnered $25 million+ in earned media and became the most trending topic on X and other platforms. All for a building cost of under $15,000.

This is the perfect example of where we are headed: CreAItivity. A form of creativity that has at the heart of it an AI-generated solution but with a soul that resides in the perfect human insight and training. The AI President could not work without being trained in more than 90 years of human journalism, all borne out of pain, frustration and devotion attached to the love of a country.

EPICAC, while boasting that it writes a better love poem, could not have done so without being trained on what love is. The narrator, in response to EPICAC’s claim to be a better writer and trying to explain why the computer could not marry Pat, proclaims, “But humans are made of protoplasm.”

The one danger I see in the use of AI is the use of it for the sake of it. This year, BBDO won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix for a project that was at the opposite end of AI. The jury president mentioned that in a world of AI being overused, a campaign in which children hand-drew wedding cards to protest against child marriage without using AI at all was a breath of fresh air. As badly generated work through AI proliferates, brands will look for the differentiating factor that can only come from a human being able to differentiate.

CreAItivity happens when data fed into AI has human reasoning behind it, built out of genuine emotional insights that are felt. Without it, it would be as devoid of emotion as a badly faked stock image in a brochure. While we prompt AI to write us several love poems, we must not forget that what we feed it is, after all, coming from protoplasm. And in that thought is where the best work will happen.

Ali Rez is Regional CCO, Middle East and Pakistan, BBDO Worldwide.He has won 37 Cannes Lions, including 3 Grand Prix.a.rez@impactbbdo.ae