The responsibility of the Cannes jury is historic in the post-generative artificial intelligence (AI) year. We are at a point in the history of communication where, in 2023, the Grand Prix of previous editions could have been generated, produced and launched in a matter of minutes.
Now almost all people have control of exponential creative abilities that in other times would take ten thousand hours of Michael Gladwell. Consequently, the bar of the exigency of the creation was raised in the same measure. It now remains for the jury to redefine for all of us what in 2023 is, in reality, creative merit.
John Maeda, technologist and author of “How to Speak Machine,” envisions human merit moving away from operational and deterministic jobs, shifting the scope of value-worthy work toward direction, choice, and decision-making; something analogous to the scope of creation address.
It is comforting to think of a judgment that presupposes a separation between what wheat is: the value of the idea, of the non-deterministic choices and decisions, of the insight brilliant human and who deserves the Lion; and what is the straw: the work of the generative AI, giving the machine the role of executor of the human idea. In an analogy, would the credit for the idea in the ever-brilliant Whopper Detour lie in the power of the imagination: “what if anyone inside a McDonald’s could eat a Whopper delivery for a penny?” The “how”, the execution, the implementation -which in this case gave a gigantic job- could be relegated to Artificial Intelligence, if that were a case of 2023.
Therefore, should the jury try on fairness? Treating unequal cases to the extent of their inequality: A brilliant idea in a campaign generated for generative exponentiality could be freely compared to another brilliant idea, only the latter done in the old-fashioned linear fashion? Something like “the pieces the AI touched are not decisive; Are we going to confront an original idea with another idea of the same cut?” It sounds philosophical, but that discussion is already having very practical effects: Is it possible to separate human input from machine-generated output?
But the creative process doesn’t happen exactly like that. Even, because the results and the impact of the ideas must count in the judgment. Whopper Detour is also a Grand Prix, mainly because of the measurability of the impact of the idea.
It is very difficult to separate the idea from the technology, since the creative process is and always has been, essentially, managing the resources and limitations of the available technology. From the type, through the radio, YouTube, to Bard or Product Studio.
Now, technology helps us organize all the information in the world, increases its power of cognition and its capacity for realization. Therefore, the AI is neither a teacher nor a simple executor of who has the idea. AI is the co-pilot of those who know how to use technology well.
At Google we have commented that in the real world we will not compete with AI. We are going to compete with someone who learned to use the available resources of Artificial Intelligence. Will the Cannes jury follow the real world or try to separate the wheat from the chaff? The Whopper Detour “prompt” was ready long before the technology was set to place the Whopper Detour in the world. And the greatest value was really in what happened: crowds eating Whoppers inside McDonald’s restaurants.