AI in advertising is having a moment. My LinkedIn feed is full of it. My inbox is full of it. And my DMs are full of people asking if we should be worried, impressed or somewhere in between.
As a creative director who uses AI every day, I’m sitting right in the middle of that debate. But the recent Autotrader “It’s time for Autotrader” AI adverts helped clarify something for me. It showed me exactly where the line is.
The work is technically brilliant. You have to look twice, but once you do, something in your brain starts to tighten. A face looks a little too smooth, a smile lands half a beat too late, or a newborn looks… almost right, but not right enough. Your instincts tell you something’s off long before you can articulate it logically.
