When OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently warned that people are starting to “talk like AI,” he captured a tension many of us feel in our digital lives.
Scroll through social media or corporate websites today, and the language often sounds polished but generic – efficient, yet flat. What’s missing is the spark of human originality, the texture of lived experience, and the nuance of culture.
Altman is right to point out this risk, but the problem goes deeper than tone. Without human creativity at the centre, AI can flatten not only our voices, but also our capacity to innovate.
The limits of pattern recognition
AI’s strength lies in finding patterns across vast datasets. It can summarise, predict, and optimise faster than any individual.
In programmatic advertising, for example, AI is invaluable at analysing billions of data points to connect the right message with the right audience at the right time. At StackAdapt, we’ve built systems that do this at scale, and the results are undeniable: efficiency improves, and teams make better-informed decisions.
But pattern recognition is not creativity. AI systems excel at reinforcing what already exists; they are not designed to challenge assumptions or imagine something radically new. Left unchecked, this gap creates a feedback loop where everything looks and sounds the same. Campaigns become formulaic, communication sterile. And in a broader sense, society risks losing the originality that drives progress.
This isn’t just theory. According to Marketing Week, more than half of brand marketers (57.5%) are already using AI to generate content and campaign ideas. But consumers are less certain about the results. Deloitte found that among those familiar with generative AI, 70% say it makes it harder to trust what they see online.
People break the mould
Human creativity is not an inefficiency to be smoothed away – it is the engine of innovation. People ask uncomfortable questions, draw connections across disciplines, and tell stories that resonate emotionally, not just rationally.
Consider the “Share a Coke” campaign. No algorithm would have spontaneously decided to replace a global brand’s iconic logo with common first names. That leap came from human insight about personalisation and belonging. AI can now scale that kind of campaign, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience, but the spark itself came from people.
At StackAdapt, we see this interplay daily. One client in the travel sector used AI-powered audience targeting to identify consumer intent signals at scale. But what made the campaign resonate was the creative team’s decision to shift the storytelling away from destinations and toward emotions – nostalgia, adventure, relaxation. AI delivered efficiency; humans supplied meaning. The combination led to a measurable lift in engagement and bookings.
AI can generate insights and efficiencies, but it’s human creativity that transforms those into campaigns that truly connect with audiences.But even the definition of creativity itself is shifting with the rise of AI. For decades, creativity in marketing often meant refining the fine details of a campaign or troubleshooting executional challenges – work that, while valuable, is increasingly automated.
Today, what sets people apart is not the ability to optimise tactics, but to elevate strategy: to shape the human-to-human connections, cultural resonance, and shared experiences that no algorithm can replicate. As AI scales pattern recognition, companies that empower their people to focus on meaning, empathy, and originality will gain a decisive advantage.
Building AI that amplifies creativity
If companies want to harness AI responsibly, they must put human creativity at the center of their strategy. That requires more than lip service. It means making deliberate choices in how AI is designed, deployed, and integrated into work.
Three principles stand out:
- Invest in talent, not just technology. The most advanced AI system is meaningless without people who can use it thoughtfully. Companies should prioritise training, upskilling, and creating space for employees to focus on high-value creative work. This matters more than ever: by 2030, up to 30% of US work hours could be automated, but demand for roles requiring creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence is projected to grow by 22%.
- Design for transparency. AI should not be a black box. When a system makes a recommendation, people need to understand why. This empowers teams to question outputs, apply judgment, and make more ethical, informed decisions.
- Prioritise originality. Businesses should view AI as a tool to give people more freedom to experiment and take risks, not less. If AI handles the repetitive or analytical work, employees can spend more time on the uniquely human activities that differentiate brands and ideas.
At StackAdapt, we developed Ivy™, our AI marketing assistant, guided by the belief that technology should empower, not replace, people. Ivy supports marketers with data analysis, audience insights, and campaign setup, freeing them to focus on what humans do best: crafting compelling stories, testing bold ideas, and connecting with audiences in meaningful ways.
The real race in AI
There’s a tendency to assume the future of AI will be determined by whichever company builds the biggest or most powerful model. But that view misses the bigger picture. The organisations that will win in the long run are not the ones that merely scale efficiency – they’re the ones that amplify imagination.
As the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 highlights, 39% of the skills employers consider essential today will change by 2030. Among the fastest rising are creative thinking, resilience, and adaptability. That should be our north star.
AI is not an end in itself. It is a tool – a remarkable one – but still a tool. The value comes from how people wield it. If we treat AI as a replacement for human ingenuity, we risk a world where everything feels the same: the same campaigns, the same language, the same ideas. If we use AI to empower human creativity, we unlock a future where technology doesn’t flatten originality but multiplies it.
The choice is ours. As leaders, engineers, and innovators, our responsibility is clear: put people – their creativity, empathy, and vision – at the heart of our AI strategies. Because in the end, progress is not driven by patterns. It’s driven by people.
Yang Han
Yang Han is CTO at StackAdapt. Yang has founded several startups and is a frequent speaker at marketing and technology conferences where he talks about building AI technology. Previously, he built financial trading software at Bloomberg.
