AI Slop Raises New Questions About the Future of Advertising

Generative AI is transforming advertising at remarkable speed, but human creativity, insight and judgement remain critical to producing work that truly connects with audiences, according to Anthea Whitehead, Cape Town Campus Manager, AAA School of Advertising.

According to the SA Social Media Landscape Report 2025, 78% of marketers in South Africa are already using AI tools, while globally, 90% of CMOs say craft and design are becoming even more important to keeping brands distinctive in an AI-enabled world.

Generative AI has made it faster to design, produce, edit and distribute creative ideas. A campaign concept can now be turned into hundreds of visual executions within minutes, with images generated, copy refined and variations tested before a traditional production team has opened its first file.

But when anyone can create almost anything at the click of a button, does learning how to create something meaningful still matter?

The answer lies in viewing advertising as a craft rather than simply a production process.

Good advertising has always combined creativity and discipline. It requires finding a meaningful insight, understanding the audience, developing an idea, connecting it to the brand and making creative decisions that allow the message to resonate.

This is particularly important in South Africa, where understanding audiences requires an appreciation of different languages, cultures, communities and lived experiences.

Data can tell us a great deal about people, and AI can help process that information, but neither can replace the experience of observing how people live, speak, behave and see the world.

A tool might generate something that looks like a South African consumer, but recognising whether it feels authentic and culturally relevant requires human understanding that cannot simply be generated by a prompt.

That understanding is developed through curiosity and experience. Good creatives look beyond the obvious, observe how people behave, listen to how they describe problems and engage with people from different generations and communities.

These experiences become the raw material for insight while developing something increasingly valuable as technology makes execution easier: informed creative instinct.

An experienced creative can often recognise when an idea works before being able to explain exactly why. They can sense when an idea has potential, when an execution is missing something or when something technically impressive simply fails to connect.

This instinct is honed through studying advertising principles, examining good and bad work, experimenting, receiving feedback and, importantly, making mistakes.

The same applies to strategy. AI can process enormous amounts of information, but information is not understanding. Strategists still need to question research, challenge assumptions, understand the category and recognise when an answer does not make sense.

The craft of advertising therefore goes far beyond execution. It combines observation, research, thinking, writing, design, storytelling and judgement to turn information into ideas and ideas into communication that people can connect with.

For students entering the industry, the tools they learn today may soon become outdated. Their ability to think, question, observe, create and make decisions will give their careers longevity and impact.

For advertising educators, the challenge is to prepare students to work with technology without allowing technology to do the thinking for them.

Students need to understand how to use new tools, but they also need the foundations of the discipline: finding an insight, developing an idea, understanding an audience and crafting work until it earns its place.

These are the foundations of advertising and they remain worth learning, regardless of what technology comes next.