'Stock imagery is dead,' I told them.
'It has always been an accountant's answer to a creative's problem, a miserable trade-off which wryly packages unoriginality as standard.
'It has so many anxiety-inducing drawbacks. I can hardly bring myself to consider it further.'
I added, 'Luckily, there is no need.'
Of course, because AI moves at the speed of fiber optic transmission, I don't think the news came as much of a shock to my audience of science marketers at SAMPS (Sales and Marketing Professionals in Science) in Glasgow in late June.
Despite the shamelessly sensational angle, as the day of the presentation approached, I became increasingly aware of how hard it is to prepare, write and present on the subject – if originality is your game, and it is mine.
And while stock imagery's death will, in fact, be more drawn out (and no doubt painful to many of those accountants), as such, it has not yet truly happened. So I think we all knew I was repackaging something we'd all been thinking about. Everything to do with image-making has changed in a few short months…
Our predictable world – our workflows and so much more, however flawed – are in flux. A flux which refuses to pause for breath, one which only gathers pace.
This reality is unnerving. And unnerved is how I would describe the atmosphere of the discussions about AI and its place in our world at SAMPS. People are in awe – awe supposedly being an emotion which comprises all other emotions, including those of fear and excitement.
Humans are in awe. And we're also awfully worried. About jobs, about creative integrity. About what happened yesterday and what it says about what will happen tomorrow. The trajectory.
So the main point I wanted to make to the gathered audience was where we at UP THERE, EVERYWHERE have elected to plant a flag. Ethics.
We believe our use of AI in marketing needs to be validated by principles which provide tests to our output, tests which, unlike the technology, do not relentlessly shift.
UP is about to publish its own code of ethics on the use of AI. Something we've been talking about for almost as long as generative AI has meant anything to the layperson.
It will seek to provide a clear and simple framework for new applications which emerge daily. And it will guarantee clients they get ethically sound value without risk.
We will ask our team members to agree to it and other collaborators to sign it and abide by it in all developments, current and future.
In science, integrity more than matters. It's an establishing principle. And we believe it should be the same in our use of creative tools – all tools in fact.
Huge thanks to SAMPS for inviting us to present and share our vision of AI in science marketing.
Contact us to learn more about how AI imagery can help your life science marketing.