The standard of AI is improving. Let’s hope advertisers keep up.

In an age when even facts are regarded as subjective, brands and advertisers have more liberty than ever to say and show whatever they like in their ads.

The lawful requirement that all advertising is “Legal, decent, honest and truthful” still holds – theoretically – but honest is a broad canvas (always has been) and which of us can truly say we’ve not received a brief that pushes the boundaries of truthful?

'Decency’ is the most subjective of all these terms. It alludes to a set of nebulous moral and societal standards and asks advertisers to adhere to them.

In the past, there’s been a broad consensus around society’s standards. That is possibly not the case now, but it should be. Standards distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, in life, the universe and advertising. 

But even if we can’t agree on what’s decent, one would hope it’s incumbent upon brands to run work that upholds a basic level of accuracy and competence.

So yes, it bothers me that Snapchat recently ran a terribly written OOH ad – grammatically incorrect and clumsy to boot. Someone on LinkedIn – I can’t be bothered to look them up – launched a passionate defence of the brand’s shoddy output, because “it doesn’t matter” and “the kids don’t care”, but I do. “It doesn’t matter” is the start of a very slippery slope.

Standards should be personal. I am the harshest judge of my own work and I project that judgment on what I see from others. So it irritates me that some clients are running formulaic, poor quality text from ChatGPT as copy (American spellings, we see you), and images that might not be any good but, you know, they’re AI.

We should apply the highest of standards to whatever work we create for our clients, and hope that they share this commitment to producing text and images that elevate the public discourse, or, at the very least, don’t pollute it.

That means engaging agencies/collectives/freelancers who use their professional skills to make every piece of communication as good as it can be. That’s the entire point of our existence (that and having fun doing the job). And from a creative point of view, encouraging our clients to employ the same ethos.

Working hard to perfect an AI image should be every bit as rewarding as doing the same in InDesign; maybe even more so as the creative canvas is so great. The opposite approach – standing back and running whatever’s spat out – simply isn’t right.