EDUARDO BRANCO BETWEEN PRACTICALITY AND PRACTICAL CONCERNS

Eduardo Branco, Senior Creative Director at Digitas, considers that “AI is a tool. It’s a technological advancement that will let us do things quicker, better, and in an incredibly more automated, efficient and streamlined form.” 

Branco is a proponent of AI. In fact, he says at the agency, “we use AI regularly in our campaign development and brainstorming process. AI allows us to visualize things, mockup specific visuals, and – in many cases – do a 3-hour job in 3 minutes. We’ve used it in global and local campaigns, and today, our lives would be much harder if AI (image-generation, text generation, video-generation, audio generation) were to disappear from the world.”

For Branco, it seems, “Clients love speed and cost-effectiveness, so we don’t need to convince them of the benefits of AI. Nine out of ten clients are asking us how AI can streamline the creative process and make their marketing/comms more efficient and/or visually appealing.” However, he always shares cautionary tales, because apparently clients need to be notified as to “what can be done, what can’t be done, and giving clients an understanding of what’s out there and what’s also a myth. There are many challenges and limitations on most platforms today, and things are changing daily.” For resizing banners or creating work based on a specific style, AI will work wonders and definitely be a more efficient way of delivering on the request.

Branco is, however, lucid about the limitations of the process. For him, “AI needs orchestrating, it needs inputting… AI will never create something original, from scratch - it will only repurpose based on whatever’s been fed into it. For resizing banners or creating work based on a specific style, AI will work wonders and definitely be a more efficient way of delivering on the request.” Branco is nothing if not practical. Aside from the theoretical debate about AI, he confesses that he is “less scared about AI taking our freedom or jobs as I’m with AI being used in bad faith.” From recreating voices for voice scams to fake news and deepfakes, “it’s become incredibly easy to blur the lines of what’s real and what’s true, and honestly, that’s really scary.” All this is without even considering copyrights and how someone’s work can be replicated without proper rules and regulations. Because, aside from the philosophical debate, it is the nitty-