A new report from the World Federation of Advertisers found that 80% of brand leaders worry about their agency partners using generative AI on their behalf. Experts say it’s up to marketing teams to dispel those fears.
While the use of generative AI within brands is continuing to grow, the vast majority of brand leaders – 80% – have “serious concerns” around how the technology is used by agency partners on their behalf, according to a new report from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).
Based on a survey of brand leaders across multiple countries, the report also found that respondents most commonly cited legal, ethical and reputational risks (in that order) as “major roadblocks to more widespread adoption” of generative AI within their organizations.
Marketers have good reason to be concerned about legal risks as regulators in the US, UK and Europe crack down on the use of AI, in some cases mandating penalties for developers or other organizations that misuse the technology.
The onus of responsibility when it comes to those legal hurdles should fall on the shoulders of marketers, says PJ Pereira, founder and chief creative officer at ad agency Pereira O’Dell. “Agencies must ensure that the datasets and [AI] models being used are both safe and compliant with regulations,” he says, “as mishandling this can expose brands to reputational and legal risks.”
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There are also serious ethical and reputational pitfalls to consider. Last summer, a video spot from Volkswagen featuring a deepfake cameo from Elis Regina, a beloved Brazilian singer who died in 1982, sparked debate about the ethics of using AI to recreate the likeness of a deceased person. More recently, a short brand film created for retail giant Toys R Us using Sora, a text-to-video model developed by OpenAI, was subjected to harsh criticism online, hurting an already floundering brand.
All the while, tech companies like Google, Meta and Amazon are racing to build new generative AI models, making it easier and more attractive for brands and agencies to integrate the tech into both operational and creative processes.
Many marketers have been simultaneously curious about the creative potential presented by generative AI and fearful about the risks at hand. That cognitive dissonance is compounded by the WFA’s finding that many brand leaders are worried that generative AI could be used on their behalf by agency partners, unbeknownst to them, in a well-intentioned but possibly harmful manner.
To make matters worse, the research also found that brands often seem to be in the dark about how their partners are deploying generative AI: only 36% of companies have implemented specific guidelines dictating how agency partners can use generative AI on their behalf, and just 29% have updated media and creative agency contracts with AI-focused clauses, according to the report.
Such a lack of understanding can be detrimental, argues Tyler Reed, founder and senior content strategist at digital PR firm Bizwrite. “It is a clear and present danger to our brand if any of our agency partners utilize AI without our knowledge or consent,” he says.
Ella Cathey, senior account executive at ad agency Codeword, says that the agency has benefited from clearly communicating its AI usage to brand partners. “We score points with clients by explaining how we’ve integrated AI into our workflows across all of our teams while addressing their two biggest concerns: that the output is accurate and their information is kept confidential,” she says.
The primary importance of clear communication is echoed by Bizwrite’s Reed: “The best approach is to be transparent,” he says. “Develop an AI policy for your agency and convey this to your clients up front, [ideally] at the proposal stage. Acknowledge the level of AI usage in your organization even if it’s nothing more than the AI spelling and grammar features present in your word processing program and email.”
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