How can AI amplify creativity?
In an era of content abundance, how can AI serve as a catalyst for creativity, pushing the limits of artistic and innovative expression?
In this TED x PwC film, we follow award winning creative engineer, music producer, and entrepreneur Manon Dave, as he leverages the transformative capabilities of AI to create groundbreaking experiences across diverse sectors and industries.
If you can imagine it, you can create it.
How can AI help with brainstorming and creative development? Bret Greenstein: It's probably the best creative partner you could have, not just because it’s infinitely patient and doesn’t judge. But because it’s almost infinitely knowledgeable and has no constraints with where it thinks. So, some of the most creative minds go straight to AI. They challenge it with a premise – using it to unlock their inner biases. It moves you outside your comfort zone and triggers new ideas. And that that is ultimately what the opportunity unlocks here – to create new art, new music, new genres.
How is AI changing the role of the human in creative industries? Scott Likens: Initially everyone focused on this as a cost savings tool. But that speed of scaling ideas can also bring to life much more ‘magic’. For example, in marketing, just turning an idea into a visual could take hours, days or weeks – now it's almost instant. In no time, you can create a whole campaign that resonates with different cultures and languages. And you can test that – look at your idea from every angle, against the brand, goals, markets, research. Then go back to the drawing board, over and over again – creating different permutations and really simulating all possible outcomes. You’re also not constrained by deadlines and the fear of failure – because things are faster and cheaper. And that unlocks creativity – it's a liberating power. And we're seeing it throughout industries – in product development and R&D.
It's probably the best creative partner you could have
How will agentic AI help creatives to experiment and push work further than humanly possible? Scott Likens: Unlike traditional AI, Agentic AI can reason, plan and take action all on its own. Today we’re seeing creatives lean into these ‘agentic companions’ as a digital worker that you can create, interact with and brainstorm with—creating unlimited iterations. Then as the human in control, you make that final judgment on what works. Taking this one step further, PwC’s agent OS acts as platform agnostic switchboard for AI, connecting different specialised agents across the creative process—from assessing the market for opportunities to stand apart, to real time performance measuring, post launch. So, AI is opening up a whole new set of opportunities for creative ideas, with humans always being the inventor, orchestrator and curator of these ideas that would never normally happen, whilst getting to market at a much faster speed.
How will multimodal AI help creatives invent brand new art and music? Bret Greenstein: Until now, we’ve focused on things we can do by hand – just doing them faster and saving money. But multimodal AI is different. These are AI systems that integrate multiple data sources – like text, images, audio and video – which enables much more nuanced, versatile and sophisticated interactions. Take music. You can play around with a six-string guitar and that's cool, but a person could play that. People have even played 12 string guitars. But what about a 30-string guitar? So, it’s about unlocking the potential of our imaginations beyond the limits of the world we live in – to doing things that could never be done. This opens up a ton of creativity that no one would have experienced otherwise.
creatives are already seeing the power of AI agents as an enabling force, as well as a brainstorming companion.
Is there something that other industries can learn ‘culturally’ from the creative industries? Pete Brown: Yes, one thing is around leadership – creating that environment for experimentation, empowering the workforce to play with the technology. This comes naturally in creative industries. You can get your best innovation from your broader workforce, so let them play with AI. Another thing is creating that inclusive culture where mistakes are accepted – if you don't make mistakes, you're probably not innovating hard enough. That's part of the learning process and ultimately enables better outcomes for your customers and stakeholders. So, it’s almost about giving people safe spaces to fail – or failing responsibly. The organisations that innovate most effectively are those with a culture of empowerment and trust across the workforce – because they have leaders who are role-modelling those behaviours, including making mistakes.
How can leaders embed AI to transform business? Pete Brown: AI has huge amounts of intelligence, but it’s the people who ask better questions who are getting the most out of that intelligence. So we tell our clients to encourage people to experiment and be curious about AI – be fearless and use their critical thinking. We're seeing it pop up in very surprising, hugely impactful scenarios – and many of these are delivered by experimentation. As long as it's done in a responsible way, it’s good to make mistakes – you learn from those mistakes and develop the best approaches. Then AI moves from a technology asset to something that truly changes the way your business evolves.
we tell our clients to encourage people to experiment and be curious about AI – be fearless and use their critical thinking.
As we cede more agency to AI, how do we safeguard responsible AI practices, ethical standards and intellectual property protections? Brenda Vethanayagam: When a system looks, sounds and feels like a person, it’s inherently able to influence people. So, the need to keep AI responsible has never been higher. We tell our clients, when you're exposing AI to your customers, additional guardrails have to go into that – people must understand what they're interacting with, what it can do for them and what it shouldn't do. In a way, we also need to ‘protect the AI’ against what people might try and use it to do. That’s why leaders need to think about proper governance – employing people who are literally waking up every day thinking about whether AI is used responsibly. Not those who build it – those who monitor the risks, rights to use data, legal protections and copyright.
How can we maintain fairness in industries most affected by AI – like arts and music?Brenda Vethanayagam: We need to emphasise the idea that AI amplifies talent rather than plagiarises it or replaces it. So how, as part of the creative process, do we protect that ‘original creativity’ – and recognise it as the source? This is a big challenge, and the legal and ethical frontier must get ahead of the tech. It requires all relevant stakeholders to come to the table and outline the principles of what's fair and what makes sense in different use cases – from the artists and creators to those at the forefront of tech, legal, compliance, ethics.
How can AI create jobs rather than replace them? Joe Atkinson: Historically as technology advances it creates more jobs than it takes away. We're certainly seeing that now, but the fundamental difference with AI is the speed of the impact. Agentic AI is the real gamechanger because it is rapidly automating jobs in some sectors. However, in many others – especially professional and creative services – AI will only augment them, enhancing the job experience and enabling people to be more creative. In these cases, and in any regulated business, the human is still responsible for the final judgment. So, judgement is huge when we look at the future – because judgement comes down to human values, culture, trust, integrity. This too is evolving – how do we apply our judgments in different ways and across these mega-productive agentic workforces? We will probably need to create agents that monitor and give us the inputs we need to apply the judgment. But at the end of the day, whether it’s in creative industries like music or marketing, or in R&D and finance, humans have to retain that responsibility. So, there’s already an area of huge job creation.
Empowered - AI provides new insights that enhance my creative processes
Supported - it frees up time by automating tasks, allowing for more creative exploration
Neutral - AI doesn’t significantly affect my creative efforts
Conflicted - sometimes AI introduces challenges to traditional creative methods
Limited - AI restricts my opportunities for creativity
