Ziflow puts cutting-edge AI technology in the center of your design process, in an ethical, team-focused way
Erik Mansur
on 17 April 2023
1984 saw the creation of “The Terminator” franchise, which were functionally action-horror movies from the director of “Piranha 2: The Spawning”, but evolved to become a cautionary tale about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Plot spoilers ahead: in the future, the US military-industrial complex gives an AI called “Skynet” absolute control over its atomic arsenal, which then achieves sentience and starts World War III. Futurists and philosophers had the same reaction as movie-goers: giving that kind of raw power to a computer that can make every decision a human can—but faster and unencumbered by a conscience—is a terrifying prospect.
Fast-forward almost 40 years and 5 sequels (1.5 of them watchable) later, the age of AI has finally arrived—sort of. Neither digital creation engines that operate based on simple text prompts (Midjourney, DALL-E, etc) nor conversational chatbots (ChatGPT, Google’s “Bard”, etc) have access to the nuclear launch codes, so global annihilation seems like it’s still a few years away. But generative AI technology is causing just as much anxiety amongst marketers and visual designers today as it did within the thinking-class back in the late 20th century.
It’s not a question if developers could create artificial intelligence that produces release-ready marketing materials, but that nobody seemed to consider if they should do it. Because if you ask your average content marketer, social media manager, graphic designer or video producer, they’ll tell you that the use of algorithms to develop written and visual content could make their employment look far more expensive by comparison. Creatives might have a right to be nervous—because the more these AI-powered services proliferate and the more they can deliver enterprise-quality deliverables with little-to-no human intervention, the more upper management may have a tendency to devalue the work of a real-life person.
Unlock creativity: Empower teams with AI-driven collaboration to boost innovation and output with limited resources.
I work for a software company called Ziflow—which helps large and mid-sized enterprises accelerate their creative workflow—and we’re of the firm belief that the world needs more creators, not fewer. We think that AI should be used to inspire collaboration amongst your team instead of being used as a replacement for your most gifted colleagues. We also believe that there’s a great deal of value to be gained from working with generative AI, particularly for small or strapped creative teams who find that their fountain of ideas has run dry. Both of these things can be true at the same time, and last week Ziflow released a solution that seeks to accomplish both aims.
ZiflowAI is an AI-powered chatbot that’s built inside of our award-winning Proof Viewer, a tool that thousands of teams use to move their creative review and approval process forward. Any of a team’s reviewers can prompt ZiflowAI with a question during the course of a collaborative creative review. In seconds, the chatbot will provide an answer that can help the team arrive at an inspired solution to a creative impasse, eliminating the need for a time-consuming brainstorm discussion.
Here are some real-world examples of how putting generative AI in the middle of a creative workflow—as opposed to the start—can lead to outcomes both positive and principled:
Transforms raw ideas into polished taglines and imagery.
Your marketing team writes a compelling brief for an upcoming campaign, and the first version looks fantastic, but either copy or the visuals seem…off. While using Ziflow during the review process, the team queries the chatbot and asks for some ideas for taglines or imagery that could match the tone of the campaign. ZiflowAI responds with a couple of great ideas, the team votes on their favorites, and after the review team chooses the “winners”, the proof is sent back to the designers to have those changes implemented.
Decode vague feedback into actionable updates.
Depending on the size of your company, there may be a heavy reliance on your creative team’s “psychic abilities” to determine what a high-ranking stakeholder means when they offer vague or reductive feedback. (e.g. “Can you make it pop?”) But if that same stakeholder had easy access to conversational, generative AI during the course of their review process, they could have a sounding board to bounce ideas off of—giving way to feedback that’s both easy for your design team to understand and can move a creative process forward more efficiently.
To look at it from another angle: Ziflow’s application of generative AI doesn’t interfere in how a designer produces the material, nor does it provide the first set of taglines or text that could keep a talented copywriter from contributing. In empowering stakeholders, creatives, and other collaborators to use AI during the review and approval part of the process, ideas both tactical and strategic can be proposed with the context of a realized version. In short, Ziflow encourages a more ethical, team-focused use of generative AI, by introducing it after a talented team has already completed the initial creative work.
There are many companies within the creative technology space that have already implemented generative AI into their software solutions, and we’re optimistic about how companies will make use of these tools. But with ZiflowAI, we aimed to be first-to-market with an innovative feature that uses AI to spark conversation and to stimulate creativity, instead of replacing the valuable work that designers and content providers can bring to a marketing organization.
ZiflowAI is available today for mid-sized and large enterprises who use Ziflow to accelerate their creative workflow. For more information on how your company can inspire—not inhibit—your creative team through the use of generative AI, find us online at Ziflow.com.
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