Last week, DermiCool released its latest summer campaign, which was created entirely using artificial intelligence (AI) in partnership with Wondrlab, The TopScout, and Crushed Studios, building on the brand’s previous ‘Garmi ki Pakad’ success.
Around the same time, Tata Gluco+ also released its first thematic film during IPL, crafted completely by Rediffusion AI Design Studios under the “Piyo Goodness, Karo Greatness” banner.
Keya Foods launched four AI-generated cricket-meets-cuisine films for the IPL season, using AI for both visuals and voiceovers.
These fully AI-generated campaigns, released within days of each other, signal a turning point: generative AI is no longer a toy, it’s a tool of the trade. According to The Business Research Company, the global generative AI advertising market is valued at $3.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $8.1 billion by 2029, clocking a CAGR of 24.4%.
But what does this acceleration mean for the craft of advertising, and the role of creatives?
“AI today is like the Swiss Army knife of creative departments,” says Shashwat Vatsa, AVP – brand at Olyv. It’s being deployed across ideation, scripting, trend mapping, asset resizing, and personalisation, which are tasks that once took days and can now be accomplished in minutes. The result? More bandwidth for strategic thinking and less grunt work, he says.
At agencies like Pulp Strategy, AI is already “core to how modern creative teams operate,” says founder and chief strategist Ambika Sharma. It’s used for storyboarding, visual development, versioning, and optimisation loops. Sharma is quick to point out that the creative idea and the strategy “still begin and end with a human”.
Indeed, AI’s most persuasive promise isn’t replacement, it’s augmentation. “The threat isn’t AI, it’s complacency,” Vatsa says. “The best creatives will treat AI like a creative intern on steroids — useful, fast, but still needing human direction and sharp instincts.” That human edge lies in interpretation, instinct, and insight, which are qualities AI still lacks. Says Meher Patel, founder of Hector AI, “While AI is improving rapidly in mimicking tone, sentiment, and even stylistic nuance, emotional intelligence remains inherently human.”
There’s also growing consensus on the new skills required in this AI-assisted landscape: prompt engineering, emotional fluency, strategic context, and what Sharma calls “multimodal brand fluency”. Creatives must now be able to brief a machine without losing the soul of the message. AI will lead to less execution, more editorial judgement, according to experts. Or as Sharma says: “The teams that fear AI are often trying to outwrite it. The smarter ones are out-thinking it.”
Despite the surge in AI-led output, the industry believes it is yet to crack the formula that makes advertising memorable. Sandeep Goyal, MD at Rediffusion, says the impact will be uneven: “AI will affect production houses the most. Meanwhile, it will make creatives more powerful.” His agency’s AI studio has already produced over 100 ads, with some headed for television.
As the industry recalibrates, one thing is clear: the line between human and machine-made is fading. But the most resonant campaigns will likely be those where the human touch and algorithm work hand in hand, not in opposition.