Creativity in 2030 - inside the future of human-AI collaboration
This story is part of AdAge’s Future of Advertising 2030 series exploring how marketing, media and creativity will evolve over the next five years.
Will machines become as creative as humans? If so, when? How will advertising evolve as creatives and AI collaborate more closely? How should humans feel about their creative efforts-not just in the realm of production but ideation-if much of it is eventually done by non-humans?
There are few answers to these questions yet. But they are ever more pressing …
Upper funnel vs. lower funnel
Given these relative strengths, many predict there will still be a certain separation of labor between humans and AI, with the former more focused on higher-order insight and originality and the latter dominating much of the mechanics of execution.
“Performance and lower-funnel marketing is gone. It belongs to AI now. No humans required, no magic left—just machine optimizing machines,” said Vince Soliven, executive creative director at Copacino. “The only place humans will matter is where machines cannot go: into the messy, contradictory, imperfect corners of human insight.”
“The bottom end of the advertising and marketing industry will be largely replaced by AI, the higher end will be influenced but not replaced,” said Angus Kneale, chief creative at Preymaker, a content agency combining creative, production and technology. “AI is hard to control, and these controls are going to take time to develop.”
This article originally appeared in AdAge on 22 September 2025.