Sydney-based independent agency, Five by Five Global, is gearing up to host a live experiment that will put human creativity head-to-head with artificial intelligence (AI). The experiment aims to compare the creative abilities of a human team and an AI model, in a bid to spark conversations about the role and future of AI in the creative industry.

The human team comprises of Creative Director/Senior Copywriter, Nick Snelling, and Senior Art Director, Emma Chu. The AI model, on the other hand, has been developed by former Meta technology strategist and generative AI consultant, Tom Dowuona-Hyde. Both teams will be given a real brief by a real brand and will have a single day to respond.

The AI model has been trained on successful advertising campaigns, creative methodology, and a Large Language Model (LLM). While the human team can use everything except AI in their creative response, Dowuona-Hyde can only prompt the AI model with the brief and select the best ideas it generates.

The results will be presented to a panel of expert judges, including Natalia Pawlak (ex-Samsung), Jason Juma-Ross (Meta), senior advertising creative Bettina Clark, and an anonymous client sponsor. The event is scheduled to take place at 4 pm on 17th September and is free for client-side marketers.

"We’ve pulled this together to have an open, transparent and mature conversation based on something tangible that the audience will get to see first-hand in real time. There’s so much concern in our industry for human creativity, we just wanted to test how far AI has come to closing the gap we all recognised was there when the AI hype began last year," said CMO, Five by Five Global, Matt Lawton.

Creative Director/Senior Copywriter, Nick Snelling, said: "Call us naively optimistic, but Emma and I both still believe in the power of human creativity. Our impending obsolescence and the so-called singularity may be coming but it ain’t here just yet. Which is why we agreed to tilt at this windmill together. The reality is we’re both using AI as professional creatives every day anyway, so the idea it must be one or the other is a false proposition. When used well, AI is synergising human creativity rather than supplanting it. So, really, this is just a bit of fun – the meat versus the machine. Emma and I are the meat, but definitely the organic, grass-fed, free-range super-tasty kind."

"Creatives are being chased down by the beast that is AI, but screw it! Let’s throw some human sparkle at it and keep making magic," said Senior Art Director, Emma Chu.