I love AI. I’m the one building agents, shipping products with Figma Make, sometimes running experiments while I sleep. Andy Epstein is not that person. Andy is an in-house veteran, principal at Ivanglist, LLC, and longtime friend, and a healthy skeptic about what AI is doing to how we make things. 

For episode one of Cella’s Expert Perspective series, the two of us sat down to hash out our very different feelings about AI. But, truthfully, we agreed on way more than either of us expected. 

Here’s some of where we landed:

  • Companies aren’t aligned on priorities for AI. Prior to our talk, we surveyed creative, marketing, and digital leaders who told us brand fidelity is more important than speed, but only 27% felt their C-suite would agree with them

  • AI is causing drift in more ways than one. Aesthetic drift starts when you set the guidelines, AI lets more hands touch the work, and it slowly starts to slide away from where your brand started. AI slop is a whole other beast, where every brand is starting to look the same because people are pulling from the same models without customizing with their own visual and voice standards. 

  • AI policies are written to protect the company from risk. That’s it. They rarely account for brand risk, the slow degradation that happens with no creative guidelines in place. Two-thirds of teams have none. When creative, marketing, and digital teams don't step up, IT and legal will. This is a great opportunity for teams to lead by advocating for a seat at the table.

  • “Good enough” is real, and saying so is a strength. Not every project needs full creative attention. Andy's point, and I agree, is that admitting that makes you look like a financial steward instead of a gatekeeper. It buys you trust for the projects that actually do need the care and helps your brand work at scale when others are helping to build it. 

  • And if you take one thing from this: be proactive. Once you're asked to justify your AI ROI numbers, it's already too late; the decision's been made. Get there first. Demonstrate that you have a growth mindset and that you can see the opportunities AI-enabled workflows bring.

We also talk about prompting as a craft, what's left for creative teams on the other side of it, and why the teams pulling ahead right now are the ones who embrace a growth mindset.

Depending on where you sit, the friction between AI integration, creative freedom, establishing guardrails and commitment to brand integrity have come to a four-way intersection. There’s great opportunity yet a need for real-world governance. Cella by Randstad Digital journeys with companies who are balancing all of this, providing solutions and AI implementation strategies that are custom-designed for your unique challenges. Connect with us to learn more.