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AI for ad images and video creative
6 minutes · 8 steps · workout 3 of 6 in this module
What you'll be able to do
By the end of this workout, you'll be able to decide which parts of ad creative to hand to AI tools and which to keep real, and use AI to feed a creative testing loop instead of replacing it.
A first look: Where AI helps with creative, and where it hurts
AI tools are good at the parts of creative work that are repetitive: generating backgrounds and settings around a real product shot, resizing and extending an image to every placement, producing variations of a hook or headline, drafting a storyboard, writing a scratch voiceover for a test. Meta and Google both have generative features built into their ad tools that do some of this automatically. AI tools are bad at the parts that have to be exact: the product itself, text inside an image, hands, and anything presented as a real person or real customer. Keep those real.
Example: Green Garden Skincare shoots one clean jar photo. From that, the team produces a bathroom-shelf version, a gym-bag version and a morning-desk version with an AI image tool, plus 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16 crops. One shoot, nine test creatives.
What this workout covers
- Where AI helps with creative, and where it hurts
- Case: Which image gets the budget?
- AI moves the bottleneck from production to judgement
- Case: Corner Coffee's 15-second TikTok
A question from this workout: Corner Coffee's 15-second TikTok
Corner Coffee wants a 15-second TikTok for the new station location. The agency offers two routes. Route 1: an AI-generated barista avatar in a generated café, done in a day, no filming. Route 2: real staff film the counter on a phone, and AI tools handle captions, cuts, three hook variants and the vertical crop.
Which route do you pick, and why?
- Route 1, it's faster and looks more polished
- Route 2, because a real counter and real staff are the proof; AI speeds up the editing, not the truth
- Route 1, but add a small “AI-generated” label so it's honest
- Neither, TikTok needs a professional production company
Pick your answer first, then open the reasoning below.
Show the answer and the reasoning
Answer: B. Route 2, because a real counter and real staff are the proof; AI speeds up the editing, not the truth
A café sells a place and people. A generated avatar in a generated café removes exactly what the ad is supposed to prove. The editing work, captions, cuts, hook variants, is where AI tools save a day. The most common mistake is option c: the label makes it honest, but it doesn't make anyone want to visit a café that doesn't exist.
The other steps work the same way: you decide first, then see why each option is right or wrong.
How you practice here
- 2 short concept cards
- 2 multiple-choice questions
- 2 campaign cases with real-looking numbers
- 1 matching exercise
- 1 guided calculation
Part of the module: AI in Marketing
Make AI your teammate for content, ad creative, analysis and research, and understand how AI search is changing marketing.
More workouts in this module
- Writing good prompts: role, context, examples, format
- Creating content with AI: speed, brand voice and control
- AI for data analysis: from spreadsheet to insight
- AI search: how ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews are changing traffic
- Risks: hallucinations, copyright, privacy and brand safety
Programs that include this workout