Journey into the future of AI and creativity

My journey to the future of AI and creativity

"Tell me Claude, how can I revolutionize my creative profession without losing my soul in the process?" That's the question I was asking myself inwardly as I arrived at my former colleagues' and friends' home on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, at 6:30 in the morning. Direction: Montreal and its AI and Creativity Summit 2025 orchestrated by Infopresse.

Over the years, the Summit has established itself as the must-attend event for marketing, communications and creative professionals in Quebec. Every year, this day of immersion brings together experts, practitioners and visionaries to discuss the latest advances in artificial intelligence applied to the creative industries. With conferences, case studies and hands-on workshops, the event offers a unique platform for understanding how AI is transforming our businesses and creative processes. With its balanced approach between theory and real-world applications, the Summit is aimed at both curious neophytes and advanced users wishing to further their understanding of these disruptive technologies.

In my former colleague's car, we discuss our complicated relationship with artificial intelligence. Like three musketeers of the digital marketing world, we set off on a quest to discover the latest innovations on Highway 10. One, a marketer in a private company, is looking to modernize her processes. The other, a freelance designer, dreams of delegating her administrative tasks to a virtual assistant who would accompany her in her solitary work. What about me, art director at Parkour3? I want to understand how to effectively implement AI in our daily creative lives without ending up looking like one of those "AI zombies" whose existence I'll discover a few hours later.

The AI high mass: where ideas shine even brighter than screens

Our expectations for the one-day conference organized by Infopresse, where some 100 industry professionals gathered to deepen their knowledge of AI, were as high as a December 31 Bye Bye. Are we disappointed? Not half as disappointed as January 1st.

Infopresse orchestrated a well-oiled ballet of masterful lectures, inspiring interviews and participatory workshops where our neurons were as much in demand as ChatGPT servers on a Sunday morning when it's time to plan the week's menu. The diversity of speakers was refreshing: We were treated to consultants, people working in agencies, entrepreneurs who have incorporated AI into their offerings, everything from the retail world to video games to the information side of the public broadcaster. It was all there!

AI, the magic potion of modern times

With a cup of coffee in hand, the first few minutes of the conference dispelled any lingering doubts I might have had. While some creatives in our industry still have a dubious pout about AI (sometimes with good reason), the infectious enthusiasm of the panelists was like a breath of fresh air in an interminable Meet, Zoom or Teams meeting.

One particularly inspired speaker compared AI to Asterix's magic potion: a temporary boost of superpowers without the side effects of Getafix. But it was another analogy that struck a chord with my worried artistic soul.

The advent of AI is eerily reminiscent of other cultural revolutions that made creative people tremble in their time. Remember the professional painters when photography first appeared? These artists who spent hours capturing the perfect portrait of a wealthy (and often not very good at standing still) family had to reinvent themselves in the face of this magic box that did the same job in a fraction of a second (Sound familiar?).

The result? Instead of continuing to paint realistic portraits, they explored new artistic territories. Without the "threat" of photography, would we have known Impressionism, Surrealism or Cubism? It's a question that needs to be asked.

It was the same scenario when recorded soundtracks replaced live orchestras in cinemas. A tragedy for the musicians of the time? In the short term, certainly. But this innovation democratized cinema, once reserved for the elite able to pay for a full orchestra at every screening. More accessible films meant more soundtracks to compose, freeing musicians from monotonous repetition of the same scores night after night. And now, it's turned into an evening event, with an orchestra playing the soundtrack to a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movie. And the thing has become magical again, whereas it had become dull and redundant.

AI is part of this line of creative revolutions. It's not necessarily stealing our jobs, but inviting us to rethink our very definition of creation.

AI trends that have experts buzzing (like the Buzz function on MSN)

As the morning progresses, we dive into the innovations that will probably soon make new subjects for the Search Engine program. AI is evolving so fast it's dizzying: a test carried out three months ago is already as relevant as a MySpace account.

Yesterday's LLMs (Large Language Models) are tomorrow's antiques. To stay in the race, you have to continually update your skills, like a modern-day Bruny Surin.

The basic use of AI for copywriting or process optimization? That's so 2023! Now we're talking aboutAI Agents, complex systems that combine several specialized tools working in harmony, like Classels in their heyday. Each voice had its precise role, its unique tonality, but it was together that they created the magic that made our parents (or grandparents, for some) dance. A piece of advice that comes up a lot: choose your AI "family" and go deeper into it, rather than flitting between different platforms. It's okay to be the Tinder of AI for a while, but you've got to think about settling down.

AI in the kitchen: not just for warming up cold ideas

A particularly tasty interview introduced us to Laura Beaulé, founder of Dash of Honey, and Jean-Sébastien Giroux. Their testimony illustrated how AI can transform a culinary passion into a digital gastronomic empire.

Thanks to a bespoke in-house AI agent, Laura can focus on what she does best: creating recipes that make Instagram salivate. Meanwhile, her virtual assistant takes care of:

• Automatically format recipes on her website (goodbye endless copy-pasting)
• Offering measurement conversions, because our Canadian baggage still has us measuring items in cups rather than weighing them.
• Reframing the same photo of decadent brownies for different platforms and social media
• Suggest alternatives for lactose-intolerant people who still want to enjoy a creamy mac'n'cheese.
• Analyze and categorize recipes, a task that would have taken weeks to accomplish manually after three years of intensive creation.

This last feature particularly impressed me. Imagine having to manually categorize the equivalent of 3 years' worth of recipes. Quite an informational debt! I'd much rather wash the dishes of an entire restaurant on Valentine's Day!

The trick? Each task is performed by a specific AI tool, optimized for its mission, all working together like a well-orchestrated kitchen brigade.

On the user side, an external AI agent enables bluffing contextual searches. "Find me perfect recipes for a picnic" or "I need a dish for a potluck I got dragged to" are perfectly comprehensible queries for this assistant, even without explicit corresponding categories. The AI understands that a sandwich is better suited to a picnic than a boiling soup, and that a 7-tier dip is a sure-fire potluck hit, unless it suggests plane tickets to Mexico to save itself from a meal where nothing goes together.

Innovations that make me forget my growling stomach

Other equally captivating innovations were paraded on stage, like a potpourri of future technologies. In retail, hyper-personalization is taking on a new dimension, brand hacking is going mainstream, and some retailers are even experimenting with environments that adapt to the emotions detected on customers' faces. (Imagine a store that automatically turns down the volume of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" when it detects your exasperation on December 24).

But the innovation that most electrified me came from Pierre-Luc Paiement of K72: synthetic personas. By leveraging synthetic populations that integrate demographic, behavioral and contextual data from various sources across North America, with access to 12,000 attributes per synthetic consumer, you can create a conversational agent that thinks and responds like your ideal customer.

No more A/B testing that exposes your brand to public failure! Now you can put your questions directly to these virtual personas: "What do you think of this ad?" or "Does this feature seem useful to you?". And all without the risk of offending a real customer with a half-baked idea.

AI doesn't come to invent options to replace designers, it comes to give an additional analysis tool so that they can make decisions faster with less impact on the brand.

AI zombies: a marketing horror movie in four acts

Dinner at Central allowed me to digest this avalanche of information, as well as a Banh Mi so good it deserved its own AI assistant. My colleagues and I were overjoyed, already imagining how to revolutionize our respective processes.

But the afternoon reminded us that not everything is rosy in the AI kingdom. Marie-Nathalie Poirier, Radio-Canada's Chief Strategy Officer, introduced us to the four types of "AI zombies" roaming our open spaces. A taxonomy as precise as it is frightening:

1. The dependent zombie This creative has developed blind trust in AI, to the point of abandoning all critical thinking. He directly publishes the first result generated by ChatGPT without even checking whether the "facts" mentioned actually exist. His mantra: "The AI said it, so it's true."
2. The de-skilled zombie By systematically delegating his work to AI, this professional has lost his core skills. Worse still are new entrants to the job market who have never really learned to do the job "the old-fashioned way". According to Marie-Nathalie, you have to remain autonomous, as if tomorrow all AI servers collapsed (or SkyNet took control), you'd have to be able to pick up the torch.
3. The monotone zombie This creative team is content with the AI's first raw proposals, without ever refining its prompts or challenging the results. The result: a bland, homogeneous and predictable production. As AI learns more and more from AI-generated content, we risk creating a global stylistic echo chamber. Imagine a future where all ads look the same, all articles have the same structure, all visuals the same aestheticism. A creative nightmare in high definition.
4. The unmotivated zombie This one has the worst omen in my opinion. A victim of disproportionate productivity expectations since the advent of AI, this creative has lost his flame. "Since AI saves us time, we can lower prices and increase cadence!" This relentless logic is already at work in many sectors, such as daily series shoots where actors are now only allowed one take per scene. To avoid my websites becoming breathless episodes of STAT, I have to remain vigilant.

Marie-Nathalie implores executives to use the time saved by AI to deepen strategic thinking, explore new creative avenues and hone our AI expertise, rather than simply squeezing deadlines and budgets. In a world where everything is accelerating, perhaps it's depth that will set us apart.

A final word of warning concerns our cultural identity: AI, which is mostly developed by our neighbors to the south, is sorely lacking in our own cultural references. It would have been more likely to make a reference to Friends than to STAT a few paragraphs ago. It's up to us to ensure that our unique culture isn't diluted in a sea of algorithmic Americanization.

And a personal note: I've learned (or rather, accepted the fact) that I need to stop saying "s'il-vous-plaît" and "merci" to AI. Apparently, my Quebecois politeness only confuses my prompts. Efficiency before courtesy, and it's not the AI who says so.

Debriefing over a drink: "Garçon, a mojito to celebrate the revolution!"

The day-long conference answered my initial questions, while raising some exciting new ones. AI and communication are on the cusp of a profound transformation whose contours we're only just beginning to glimpse, even though our feet are firmly planted in them.

Like all the cultural revolutions that have preceded it, this one will bring about radical changes in our professions. Some roles will disappear, others will be transformed, and new professions will emerge. Our ability to adapt will be our best asset in this transition.

However, we must remain vigilant. AI must remain a tool that contributes to our creative fulfillment, not an obstacle that standardizes our expression.

You may be wondering whether I used AI to write this article, buoyed by the post-conference enthusiasm? Well, I initially opted for the traditional approach: me, my keyboard, and my notes hastily typed between conferences into my phone. No need to send my notes in bulk to the AI or give it the link to the event's web page so that it automatically generates the article. I won't be an AI zombie!

However, in the interests of transparency (strongly recommended by the experts I met), I confess to having asked Claude to reread my text to intercept any typos and suggest a few (many) optimizations. After all, even Michel Tremblay had an editor.

My next experiment? I'm going to send this article to Notebook LM to see how two podcast hosts would discuss my conference day. AI talking about AI talking about AI... It borders on digital mise en abyme!

In the meantime, let's raise our glasses to this new era where humans and AI collaborate rather than compete.