AI finds it hard to unlearn something, or to un-mutate. This is problematic, because if you’re not finding difference today, it will harm your brand tomorrow, writes UM’s Dan Chapman.

The corporate world has become obsessed with AI – and with good reason. Companies that talk up their AI capabilities tend to perform better on the stock market, draw confidence in their future investment potential and are considered more “innovative”.

There is a prevailing belief that AI-led automation will drive efficiencies, which is absolutely the case and something that brands can pin their hopes on. But without deep human insight in the mix, this could come at the cost of marketing efficacy.

Without human influence, intervention and ingenuity, AI’s normative mechanic and the current industry pervasive black-and-white decision-making, think ‘brand vs performance’, we face an existential threat to our industry: a landscape of ‘bland brands’.

Read Dan’s full piece in WARC.