“Will AI take over the creative agency in the next five years?” A lot of it, probably. AI can already write the copy, make the images, cut the video and produce a hundred personalised variations before the kettle has boiled. And it is getting better at an alarming rate.
If a creative agency is a team that turns a brief into executions, then yes, the robots are coming. But the hardest part of advertising was never making the ad. It was working out what the ad should say: why it should matter, what human truth sits underneath it, what makes someone stop scrolling, and what idea a competitor would never think of.
When it costs almost nothing to produce 1,000 ideas, ideas stop being the scarce thing. Judgement takes their place. Taste, strategy, originality, knowing what not to do, and having the nerve to look at a technically brilliant execution and say, “No. It’s not good enough.”
The economics will change, of course. If production gets ten times cheaper, clients won’t keep paying agencies simply to make more stuff. Junior production roles will evolve, agency pyramids will flatten, and anyone selling hours and headcount will feel it.
But I don’t think agencies disappear. They become less factory and more brain trust. Less “give us the brief and we’ll make the campaign”, more “let’s work out what the brand should be saying”, then use AI to make it at a speed and scale that would have been impossible five years ago.
Which leads to a slightly awkward conclusion: AI may make great agencies more valuable and mediocre ones less necessary. When everyone has the same tools, the advantage is knowing what to ask, what to reject and what to pursue.
So, will AI take over the creative agency? Probably. Just not the bit we expected. Fewer people, more ideas, less production, more judgement. The agency of 2031 will look very different from the agency of 2026, and I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing. Someone will still have to tell the client the logo can’t be bigger.