Matt Garbutt is Director of AI & Creative at Brave Bison, where he has been for the last eight years. Previous role include Creative Director at Greenlight.
Who is your digital hero?
Demis Hassabis. He’s one of those very rare people who can think like a scientist, create like a game designer, and act like a systems architect.
His work with DeepMind sits right at the point where curiosity meets compute, that a place I’ve often seen the best ideas come from.
What has he done to win hero status in your eyes?
Because he imagines with intelligence, which is a rare blend and one I wish I had.
DeepMind’s breakthroughs (like AlphaGo) weren’t just technical feats; they were creative ones. He didn’t just push AI forward, he reframed what progress even looks like. Learning as discovery, not replication or repetition.
How has their heroism helped drive digital?
Because he’s focused on pure intelligence, without the burden of efficiency that most of us have to work with.
Where most are concerned with optimisation, he’s reminded us that the real edge is understanding – how systems learn, adapt and collaborate. His influence runs deeper than AI: it reminds all of us in digital to stay curious, think long-term and design for complexity rather than control.
What are the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
Meaning. Digital has become fluent in automation but has lost some of its art. I’d like to see new heroes who can reconnect data with imagination, who can design systems that understand emotion, context and culture.
The next breakthroughs won’t necessarily come from smarter models, but from people who can teach machines to care about what matters. These people will be the most curious and adventurous practitioners who bring a blend of channel expertise and technical ability to their work with AI models. I’m fortunate to work with some of them at Brave Bison.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
Building AdStudio and AudienceGPT at Brave Bison, and proving that AI can be a creative partner, not a creative threat.
We work with AudienceGPT to write creative that is audience-led by design, because those silicon people shape it together with us in real time, and that’s a first. So, we’ve turned generative tools into something commercially useful and creatively inspiring, helping brands understand audiences in richer, more human ways with immediacy.
The most exciting moments are when the tech becomes an enabler and the idea shines through. That’s what digital heroism looks like to me and it’s deeply human.
