The human brain is pretty good at recognising and rearranging patterns – but it’s being outperformed by Artificial Intelligence, according to Dentsu Webchutney’s Vishal Sagar and Gurbaksh Singh, who are presenting today at ADFEST 2019. What does this mean for creatives? Will we still have jobs in 2030?

Sagar is an engineer by qualification, but now works as Creative Director at Dentsu Webchutney in Gurgaon. Singh is the agency’s Chief Creative Technologist and creator of India’s first innovation lab within an advertising agency.

Vishal: You’re an engineer by trade and a storyteller at heart. How did you find your way into advertising?

As a kid, I was intrigued by advertising. I just didn’t know that people could make a career out of it. So, I picked the most obvious choice: engineering. It has been a long and adventurous journey from my engineering days to today.

What sorts of stories do you love most?

I love simple and complex stories equally, as long as they are well told. I believe that stories make us human more than anything else and storytelling is a tradition that will never die. Thousands of years ago, we were telling stories on the cave walls and today we are using cutting-edge technology.

How will AI impact the art of storytelling?

AI is already having an impact on storytelling. Washington Post’s Heliograf, for instance, changed the way it covered the 2016 election. It wrote 500 articles around the election, which generated more than 500,000 clicks.  In 2012, the Post only created 15% of the content it generated in 2016.

Beyond quantity, AI will have a deep impact on the quality of content too. I believe that as AI evolves, storytellers will need to focus more on craft and disruptive ideas. 

Gurbaksh: Why did you launch an innovation lab at Dentsu Webchutney and what projects are the lab involved in?

Advertising is an ever-evolving industry. There is one thing that we remind ourselves at Dentsu Webchutney, every day is that people don’t want to watch ads. Our innovation lab is a result of this belief.

It is our job to make people interested in the stories we tell and that’s what we do at the innovation lab. We use technology to create work people would want to engage with. The lab is creating work for the world that exists at the intersection of culture and technology. We create products, campaigns and innovations. One of our latest innovations is a tea kettle that generates Wi-Fi when heated to make tea.

You love tinkering with new technologies: what was your favourite discovery of 2018?

2018 was the year of voice assistants and AI for me. We will soon be launching a project that uses both these technologies to address a global problem.

Dentsu Webchutney was crowned the Digital and Mobile Agency of the Year at Goafest, India for the very first time last year. What’s the secret to its recent success?

A young and dynamic creative team. Focus on insightful work. Cutting-edge innovations. And client agency partnerships that push for great work that works. Also, the fact that the Digital and Mobile Agency of the Year award was introduced for the first time at Goafest last year.

‘Ideas. Patterns & A.I.’ takes place on Wednesday 20th March at Craft@ADFEST 2019.