Responsible AI Use in Marketing: The Creative Noggin Team Weighs In

Is your business one of the 78%-94% that uses AI in 2026 (Elementor, McKinsey & Company, Resourcera)? AI use ranges from entire companies adopting regular use of AI tools to just one department experimenting with an AI tool specific to their job.  

In the marketing world, we often find ourselves discussing AI with each other or with clients, reading the latest article about the power and pitfalls of AI in business, or checking out the latest AI update in a platform we use regularly. 

At its core, marketing is about trust between a brand and its consumers, so we ask questions like these for both our own marketing and for our clients: 

• How can we use AI to save time while still generating good work? 

• How do we protect our own and our clients’ data and content? 

• Should we account for AI use in our privacy policy? If so, how? 

• Where do we even stand on AI as a company? 

 

Yes, AI can increase productivity, save time, and provide a competitive edge against competitors, but lurking underneath every conversation is the question: How do we use AI responsibly? 

Whether we’re writing, designing, or building websites or ad campaigns, at Creative Noggin we aim to be unique and innovative while protecting client data and stewarding their brands well. 

Below, our Director of Creative Services (Nicole), Director of Digital Services (Jackie), and Digital Content Specialist (Kelly) share their perspectives. 

 

How has AI helped your department be more efficient and creative? 

Nicole: Besides the obvious use of AI for image generation and manipulation, our creative department treats AI as a creative partner. It can be an extremely useful and time-saving tool during the concepting phase, for research, fine-tuning, and testing.  

We embrace and value human experience most, and we don’t expect, nor do we want, AI to replace the unique human experiences our creatives bring to their work. We encourage each creative to use AI thoughtfully in ways that best support their work. 

Jackie: Ad platforms have been using AI for a long time. The key is to know which settings and tools can save you time while still getting good results and which need more hands-on review.  

For example, bidding strategies on Google can be automated, which leaves more time to optimize keywords, audiences, placements, and more. Conversely, we always review any copy and creative that Google recommends. These tools are pulling information from around the internet and don’t understand the nuances to ensure your brand is well represented. 

We also use tools that connect to ad platforms and synthesize data, analyze results in real time, and even provide alerts for certain data points so you can be confident ads are performing and step in quickly when you need to. 

Kelly: When it comes to content creation, AI is helpful for creating outlines for long-form content, accelerating research, and summarizing complex material. Simply put, AI can help eliminate the “blank page paralysis” that every content marketer experiences from time to time. 

Always confirm the accuracy of information generated by AI tools, because AI hallucinations and misinterpretations can occur. In this sense, think of AI as your research assistant who is effective at finding sources—but not consistently reliable at interpreting them. 

Additionally, AI can help fine-tune content. For example, I’ve been known to ask AI chatbots: 

• “What are 3 alternative ways I could phrase this sentence?” 

• “What is the word on the tip of my tongue that means X and Y?” (AI chatbots make for fantastic thesauruses.) 

• “How could I streamline this paragraph?” 

AI-powered writing assistants such as Grammarly and Wordtune can also work wonders by catching stray typos and other errors. That said, I often find myself pushing back on suggestions that go beyond basic corrections. As with any AI tool, it’s up to me (the human user) to implement or not implement what the tool suggests. 

Practical Tip: You can’t replace a human touch. 

Even generative AI isn’t truly creating something new. It gathers information from around the internet and aggregates and summarizes to provide you with what you requested. The outcome is limited to the data that AI tools are given and have access to.  

What can we do about it? Add yourself back in! 

• Be picky about what tasks AI does. For example, repetitive tasks, analyzing data, and providing ideas are great tasks to give to AI tools. 

• Don’t forget to review what AI gives you. You can then make edits yourself or ask AI for another iteration of what it gave you. 

• Know what AI is missing on your project and add humanity back into your copy and creative by providing the context to data, and add empathy and brand voice to your creative. 

Some recommendations say to follow the 80/20 rule: Let AI do the heavy lifting (80% of the work), then layer on your human expertise (20%) to review AI’s research and ideas and finalize your work.  

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, 80/20 may not be the right split, but even if this is flipped, where AI saves you 20% of the time to do the work, that may be just what you need. 

 

What do you see other people or businesses doing with AI that just makes you cringe? 

Nicole: Using 100% AI generated logos for their businesses. From a bottom-line standpoint, I totally get it. It’s easy and cheap to ask AI to create your logo. The world has commoditized visual branding.  

However, these businesses that are building their visual brand on 100% AI-generated logos leave themselves vulnerable. Copyright law doesn’t protect purely AI-generated work, meaning another company could potentially use your logo without infringement.  

Imagine centering your visual brand around a logo and building your tribe and connecting with them, only to have another company use your logo and potentially let them down or break that trust? 

Jackie: While marketing copy can be written with AI… should it be? Or perhaps a better question is: How much do you rely on AI to write your content, and how much do you edit it? 

The relationship between marketing/advertising and consumers tends to have a cycle: 

The industry does something new → Audiences buy in for the short term → Audiences begin to distrust advertising → Advertising becomes less effective.  

While the tools and tactics of advertising have changed drastically over time, the principles of advertising haven’t really changed. Our goal is still to be authentic and connect with people. That is better for brands and consumers.  

Over-reliance on AI signals a lack of investment in our audience and creates a ‘sincerity gap.’ When an audience senses a lack of human effort, they begin to respond with a lack of human interest. 

Kelly: The first thing that comes to mind is wholesale copy/pasted AI-generated written content. I’ve seen brands that used to have a unique voice in their content suddenly transition to sounding… well, just like everyone else. 

If you’re like me and occasionally use AI chatbots for tasks outside of marketing (planning a travel itinerary, honing your baby’s sleep schedule, etc.), you probably have a pretty keen sense for spotting AI writing. You can only read the same cliché words, phrases, and repetitive structures (e.g. “It’s not ___. It’s ___.”) so many times before it becomes a bit suspicious. And monotonous.

Some of your audience likely has that keen sense as well—especially if your audience includes U.S. adults under 30, over half of whom have used ChatGPT. 

I resent the idea that tastefully incorporated em dashes, some emojis here and there, and parallelisms automatically signal AI-generated content. But when all the factors are there—the clichés, repetitive structures, and all—it becomes formulaic, alienating, and a missed opportunity to resonate by using your brand’s authentic, unique voice. 

Practical Tip: Opt-In to all the AI Security Settings 

Like any free tool on the internet, there are some downsides to free generative AI tools. Even the most well-known AI tool (ChatGPT) offers a free version… But what is the trade-off? 

With AI tools, the best thing you can do is: 

1. Check the privacy settings. 
2. Consider using a paid version for extra security. 

Be mindful of sharing sensitive information in these tools (personal data or proprietary information). By reviewing your settings and paying for their use, you are helping protect your data from getting shared with competitors and elsewhere around the internet. 

 

What is the #1 thing businesses should start (or stop) doing now? 

Nicole: Each role within a business will or can use AI differently. I think it’s important to take a look at each role (their functions and responsibilities) and look at how AI can best help that role work more efficiently. That may mean some things get automated with AI, freeing up the human to focus on their biggest and best use. 

Jackie: Remember that AI is a tool—not a human replacement. What you get out of it is only as good as the information you put into it. 

Help your team use AI tools to improve their work, knowing that it comes with its own challenges and downsides. Be flexible and focus on the consumer to succeed. 

Kelly: Don’t be intimidated by the volume of content and competition. Anyone can type in a quick prompt and get content that sounds generic and forgettable. Not everyone has the vision or care to make it memorable using their unique human judgment. 

For marketers with time, skill, and the willingness to resist simply “pressing the easy button,” the surge of trite AI-generated content is a golden opportunity to make their brand stand out like never before. Seize it! 

Practical Tip: Be transparent & prioritize your users’ privacy  

While people can’t yet spot every use of AI, we are getting better at it. We want to know if you use it, how you use it, and if you’re protecting our information. 

Here are a few things you can do to be transparent with your clients and build trust when it comes to AI: 

• Hopefully, your privacy policy page already includes information on how you gather and use customer data. This matters for AI use as well. Take a peek to make sure it’s up to date! 

• Make sure to offer opt-outs on how their data can be used. 

• If you haven’t already, add a clause about AI use in your privacy policy page. 

• Go a step further and ask for permission to gather data in your forms. While it isn’t legally required of every business, it is a great way to let your customers know that they have some say in how their information is used. 

 

Any final thoughts on AI? 

Nicole: AI is trained on massive amounts of data. It has been trained to recognize patterns and generate responses to prompts based on the data it has been trained on and the patterns it sees. Human experiences, emotions, and intuition can transcend patterns as they aren’t always logical. That is the magic that a machine can’t fully grasp or replicate. AI is JUST a tool (albeit a powerful one) and cannot fully understand the world like a human who lives in it. 

Jackie: Even though everything is always changing, the core of marketing is still the same. Brands do best when they truly connect with their audience, and, while AI can help us do that, it can also be the thing that gets in the way. 

Kelly: AI is evolving quickly, but it can’t intuitively grasp the context and nuance that comprises your brand—nor does it have the human judgment and empathy that has built the foundation of every successful brand, website, and social media presence. Lead with your humanity. 

 

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