AI accelerates, but humans navigate. That was the conclusion of an industry-first debate between a leading Australian creative and AI, held recently to discuss one of the most pressing questions facing today’s marketing and creative industry: is human creativity replaceable?
More than 130 advertising, media, production and tech professionals representing 47 agencies, industry bodies, and clients, recently gathered at The Open Table event held in Melbourne, to watch Matt Lawson, co-founder and chief creative officer at ATime&Place take on Chat GPT in a live discussion moderated by Neville Doyle, strategic client partner at Ideally.
The discussion covered a range of topics that both challenged and acknowledged AI’s powerful abilities and overall potential effect on the creative industry. ChatGPT demonstrated this live, generating answers with agility and depth in real time, with both Lawson and Doyle acknowledging its utility as a tool for speed and iteration.
But after debating ChatGPT on a number of issues, Lawson ultimately drew the critical distinction: “AI creativity is derivative, and sure we’ve had a prolific few centuries of human art and culture for it to regurgitate. But it is up to us to make the lateral leaps that create the wildly new. If not, we are heading towards a hellish blandscape. That’s my real fear with AI. Sure, it’s going to enslave us all one day, but I’m more worried about the boring stories and art it will inflict on us before that happens.”
He also expanded on the intangibles that define great creative work and said: “The best ideas come from life, from relationships – and from what I tell, the life of AI consists of trawling through a near infinite amount of data. That’s no life. AI will help us communicate in new ways, at wonderfully accelerated speeds, but it’s up to us to make those ideas human and give them real meaning. It’s up to us to lead the robots, or the future is going to be really boring. How horrible.”
In a wide-ranging debate, the panel also talked through whether creative roles could be fully replaced by AI, with even ChatGPT ultimately agreeing that it wasn’t totally possible. It noted that if a role can be fully replaced by AI, it’s likely because that role had become repetitive and process-heavy, devoid of the creative judgment that makes work meaningful.
The Open Table’s event organiser and founder of Blue Bateau Deanne Constantine said the potential effect on the next generation of creatives had been a big discussion point throughout the industry in 2025, and one the panel was keen to address during the debate.
When asked by an audience member about how to ensure AI doesn’t kill the learning journey for juniors, she said ChatGPT offered a thoughtful response, saying “it’s all about using AI’s power, but in a way that handles repetitive tasks while preserving space for young talent to experiment, make mistakes, and grow. It’s clear from this that mentorship becomes even more critical in an AI-assisted world.
“The entire debate reinforced that an AI world is actually a positive one for the creative industry. Future roles will be shaped by how well creatives wield AI, with new hybrid positions likely to emerge including AI Directors, prompt strategists, and story engineers.”
“But ultimately the craft becomes more important, not less. So despite fears that AI might homogenise creative output, the night reaffirmed the opposite: that the human creative instinct, community, humour and shared experience still lead – and always will.”
In an address to the entire audience prior to the debate’s conclusion, Sarah McGregor, national executive creative director of AKQA, encapsulated what the debate had found: “Fear has always walked beside creativity – but so has opportunity. Every new technology looks scary until someone makes something beautiful with it and if we stay curious instead of scared, we win.”
