It feels like AI came into the marketing world with shame and taboo surrounding it. However, the reality is that everyone is using it, and everyone is using it in different ways. At this month’s The Marketing Meetup in Norwich we opened the discussion for the community to chat about their AI usage.
Discussing the real AI, not the futuristic version sold in keynotes, but the messy, practical, and sometimes frustrating tool we’re all trying to figure out in our day-to-day work.
Contents
Will AI take my job in marketing?
The main question on everyone’s mind was, “Will AI take my job?”. This was met with a nuanced reality. While the media love to paint a story of marketing managers feeling cautious about job longevity, the on-the-ground reality tells a story of role transformation.
New, specialised positions are emerging, such as AI Integration Managers or LLM (Large Language Model) Specialists. These roles are less about replacing human teams and more about building internal expertise and ensuring AI is used strategically, ethically, and effectively.
At its core, many “new” AI-focused marketing fields are simply extensions of core principles. The buzz around “AEO” (AI Engine Optimisation) largely circles back to the timeless fundamentals of SEO. If your marketing strategy is all about understanding user intent and creating high-quality, relevant content. The tool may be new, but the strategy remains deeply human.
Is AI making us dumber?
Efficiency is AI’s biggest sell, but several marketers shared cautionary tales about over-reliance.
AI’s primary selling point is its ability to automate tasks and speed up day-to-day jobs. However, too much reliance could lead mean that marketers become de-skilled.
A common cautionary tale involves using AI agents to manage communications, like email. While replies may become faster, the marketer can become disconnected from the client relationship, losing vital context and the nuanced understanding that comes from direct engagement.
The greater concern lies at the strategic level. Feeding data into an AI for analysis could erode the essential human skill of strategic thinking. There’s a danger in outsourcing analysis and strategic thinking to AI. While AI can process data, it lacks the human context, experience, and creative intuition essential for truly innovative strategy.
How do I recruit now that everyone is using AI?
How do you assess human skill in an AI-assisted world? As AI use becomes standard, identifying genuine talent requires new approaches. The key is to assess not just the output, but the process behind it.
Forward-thinking teams now explicitly ask candidates to detail their use of AI in application tasks. The goal isn’t to penalise its use, but to understand the candidate’s editorial judgment, strategic input, and ability to use AI as a tool rather than a crutch. A defensive reaction to this question can be more revealing than the portfolio itself.
Should I label my AI content?
With the rise of AI-generated imagery and copy, a critical ethical and practical question has emerged: should AI content be labelled?
The consensus leans toward “yes,” particularly for visual media. The driving force, much like the regulations behind “#ad” or “sponsored,” is consumer protection and the fight against misinformation. As deepfakes and synthetic media become more convincing, transparency will likely become a regulatory and reputational imperative.
However, enforcement is a formidable challenge. Just as some circumvent advertising disclosure rules, technical workarounds to strip AI metadata will exist. The industry is potentially heading toward a cycle of improved detection tools met with more sophisticated methods of concealment.
Will there be an “Anti-AI” Cohort?
A compelling prediction emerged from the roundtable, by the end of 2026, a significant, vocal group will be actively anti-generative AI.
This sentiment will be fuelled by concerns over AI replacing creative roles (e.g., the backlash against AI-generated title sequences in Marvel’s Secret Invasion).
Resistance will be strongest where AI is seen as deceptive, generating fake imagery or impersonating human connection, rather than for utilitarian tasks like search or voice-text.
We have also already seen AI chat bots come under fire for stricter regulations after a Meta chat bot lied to a vulnerable man and convinced him to leave his home and come to New York City. He was unable to care for himself and sadly passed away.
How do I use AI to fuel creativity, not replace it?
The most hopeful practices shared were about using AI as a creative partner. Viewing AI not as a replacement, but as a collaborator.
Instead of prompting, “write a blog post,” marketers are finding success with prompts like: “Challenge the assumptions in this brief,” or “Act as a brainstorming partner and ask me probing questions about this campaign concept.” This approach uses AI to structure thinking, overcome blocks, and explore angles, leaving the final creative synthesis and emotional resonance to the human professional.
This requires robust internal guidelines. Successful teams establish clear protocols for AI use, emphasising the importance of specific, context-rich prompting and, above all, rigorous human oversight. The rule is simple: always question, fact-check, and refine the output.
The Bottom Line… A Tool, Not a Totem
The consensus was clear… AI is a powerful, flawed, and dependency-forming tool. The current belief isn’t one of blind faith, but of pragmatic integration.
The goal isn’t to let AI think for us, but to use it to handle the repetitive, allowing humans more time for the creative and connective work that truly matters. As one attendee put it: “People buy from people.” The central challenge for marketers now is ensuring that, in the rush to embrace efficiency, we don’t engineer the humanity out of our profession.
The current state of AI in marketing is not about passive adoption but active and mindful integration. It is a phenomenally powerful tool for automating the repetitive, analysing the complex, and accelerating the mundane.
The ultimate goal is to leverage these efficiencies to free up the most human of our skills: creativity, strategic insight, empathy, and genuine connection. The central challenge for today’s marketer is to harness the power of AI without losing the humanity that makes marketing truly resonate. The future belongs not to those who are replaced by AI, but to those who learn to wield it with wisdom, ethics, and a steadfast focus on human value.
What’s your view? Is AI streamlining your workflow or starting to dull your strategic edge?
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