By Will Francis, a freelance marketing educator and creator
We’re all familiar with the narrative. AI is fast! AI is efficient! AI is going to change the way you work! But while all of that is true, and in some respects, AI has meant faster content creation, better targeting, and smarter automation, it’s not always changing the way that marketers work for the better. In fact, for many of us, whether in-house, freelance, or agency-based, it’s making work a whole lot more complex, pressurised, and frustrating. It’s adding to overwhelm and increasing stress.
So, although AI holds enormous potential, for many, it is quickly becoming the antithesis of everything it’s supposed to be.
A 2024 study revealed that 77% of marketers using AI believed that it had added to their workload, not reduced it. This so-called productivity tool was making them work harder, not smarter, and yet they were still incorporating it into their daily tasks because it was expected, their managers suggested it, they didn’t want to be left behind, and there was pressure to replicate the increased speed that AI apparently delivered. So, why isn’t it delivering the much-vaunted advantages we’ve all been led to expect?
The emphasis remains on the artificial
So, the hype says that AI can save marketers time. It can produce copy almost instantly. It can replicate writing styles, produce images, videos, and conduct research. All of which should take a massive chunk out of a marketer’s workload.
The problem is that any time saved on writing is lost reviewing, fact-checking, tweaking AI outputs, and adding touches of authenticity. The data used for AI training is so diverse that it’s inevitably full of inaccuracies. Which makes quality assurance a far lengthier process than it was before AI became a thing. Formatting is also an issue, with AI content containing endless visual giveaways that hint to its origin. Sometimes editing and adding that human finish can take longer than simply creating the piece yourself.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not knocking AI. In fact, in the right place, I find it to be a massively helpful productivity tool. But right now, with businesses still finding their way with AI, there are a lot of misaligned expectations. So, for marketers, AI isn’t replacing tasks, it’s actually adding new ones.
Whether prompt writing, moderation, or fixing outputs. You can’t delegate to it. You just have to manage it. And that’s something that we all need to be aware of when incorporating AI into operational processes, so that we can benefit from the varied advantages it brings without also adding stress and anxiety to the workload.
Great expectations
When everyone knows that AI can take over core marketing processes, but no one recognises what this means in reality, there comes huge pressure for workers to do more, faster. But while managers expect faster output, workflows haven’t adapted. Marketing teams are being asked to produce more content, more campaigns, more reports, because they have this wonderful gift of AI to do the heavy lifting for them. But until AI can quickly, accurately, and authentically replicate those core skills that take up so much time, increased speed is not a realistic expectation.
Role anxiety
AI has always driven fears of wide-spread redundancies. But few of us were expecting it to hit the creative industries first. With AI has come the far-reaching devaluation of key tasks, such as copywriting, image creation, design, and photography. For the junior members of marketing teams that handle these tasks, this brings major job insecurity. There’s constant pressure to upskill or risk becoming irrelevant. If you’re not using AI, you’re already behind. If you are, you need to stay up-to-date. Too many marketers in junior or task-heavy roles already feel expendable. Which goes hand in hand with a lack of career growth.
Career limitations
This is already an issue in digital marketing – if you promote the SEO, email or social media person, how do you replace them and all that they’ve learned? It’s far easier to not promote them! But with AI you have the additional risk of self-sabotage – if I build valuable and effective workflows to leverage AI in CRM, content, analysis, and all the rest, why would you bother to promote me? And why would you bother taking on junior – or even certain senior – roles, if AI can take on the competitive grunt work for a considerably lower price?
Deskilling
The flip side of that is that there’s growing evidence that AI is ‘making us dumber’. The more we rely on AI for content, ideas, and decisions, the more we erode these core skills from the workplace. And this is bad news for businesses and individuals alike. Whether it’s writing, strategy, or creative thinking, people are losing touch with their craft. And yet, most marketers haven’t been trained to use AI effectively either, creating a genuine skills gap problem within the industry. Something exacerbated by the fact that AI is in a continuous state of evolution right now. There are new tools, new features, new rules, every week.
As marketers, our core job is to understand our audience as deeply as possible and devise creative ways to resonate with them, and to sell to them. AI can’t replicate that, no matter how useful an ideation tool it might be.
Creativity loss
It’s not just skills that AI is draining away, it’s having an impact on something even more valuable too: creativity. AI content may be easy, but it’s often bland, generic, and overly safe. When you’re trying to create or utilise a brand’s voice, tone, or emotion, it can be difficult for an experienced marketer to maintain at scale – it’s even harder for AI to do so. Consequently, there’s a creeping sameness appearing in business content produced by AI. Businesses are no longer standing out because the ease of AI means that platforms like LinkedIn are flooded with templated posts. And the fear of standing out for all the wrong reasons means that marketers with more off-the-wall ideas are rejected by senior stakeholders.
Ethics
Lastly, but equally importantly, there comes the issues of ethics, privacy, and compliance. Copyright for AI-generated work is unclear. Data privacy risks are real and serious. And if AI doesn’t deliver the goods, you’re still responsible for what it says, what it does, and who it targets. Ultimately, the buck stops with you, even though you’re expected to work faster, smarter, better, with AI’s support.
AI isn’t making marketers redundant. For the moment, we all still have our jobs. But due to the unrealistic expectations surrounding its capabilities, it’s making us overworked, under-supported, and stretched thin. AI is amazing. It’s utterly mind blowing that we’ve reached the stage where technology can do so much for us. It holds huge potential to help. But only when the implementation is right, expectations are realistic, and human creativity is still valued. Until then, AI isn’t replacing marketers. It’s just making our jobs harder in new and unexpected ways.
Will Francis is a recognised authority in digital marketing and AI, with 170k followers on social media and a 20-year career helping the world’s most loved brands grow meaningful connections with their audiences online. Having cut his teeth at MySpace and worked with brands like Samsung, Nike and Spotify, Will is now an event and broadcast speaker, traveling the world to share his expertise through talks and workshops for global brands.
