THE POWER OF CREATIVITY LIES IN HUMAN JUDGEMENT, A D&AD STUDY HAS SHOWN. TAKING SHORTCUTS CAN COST YOU DEARLY

D&AD, an organisation bringing together designers and creatives across markets, has published its second report on AI and creativity. In it, it highlights one key point: the distinction between average work and truly high-quality work has not disappeared as a result of artificial intelligence tools.

Key points from the report:

1. Originality. Without human guidance, AI tends to produce average results. Award-winning work emerged where specialised AI tools were combined with sound human judgement and craftsmanship.
2. Talent. As they shed repetitive tasks, agencies face an important choice – either to use AI to replace opportunities for people to learn, or to redesign junior roles so that they develop critical evaluation skills, taste and cultural awareness.
3. Leadership. Creative excellence cannot be delegated to AI. Agencies whose leadership actively determines how AI is implemented, what rules apply to it and how it is used will stay one step ahead.

The report ‘The Cost of the Shortcut’is based on 197 in-depth interviews with creative leaders from 30 countries and an analysis of more than 10,000 entries to the D&AD Awards. The proportion of entries declaring the use of AI more than doubled year-on-year, reaching 27.6 per cent in 2026.

As for the use of GenAI, more than half (56.2 per cent) of all entries declared its use. Among entries that won a Pencil award, this proportion reached 44.7 per cent. According to D&AD, the data shows that whilst AI is becoming a common part of the creative process, its use alone does not lead to better creative work.

“It seems there is far more talk about AI than the actual number of great works being created with its help.”

Lisa Smith, President of D&AD and Global Chief Design Officer at Uncommon Creative Studio.

D&AD describes this discrepancy simply: AI has raised the baseline, but the ceiling is still defined by human judgement; without it, models tend to converge towards mediocrity. The award-winning work clearly demonstrated the integration of specialised AI tools with human decision-making and craftsmanship.

“The choice is ours. We can prioritise judgement over shortcuts, safeguard the consistency that distinguishes competent work from exceptional work, and invest in people who learn to recognise this difference. AI has raised the baseline. It is up to all of us to set the ceiling.”

David Patton, CEO of D&AD

What to do with the time saved by AI

The report’s second theme concerns speed. According to D&AD, AI has given creative teams back some of their time, but the question is what they will use it for. According to the report, agencies that invest the time saved in deeper thinking and developing ideas produce work that the model alone could not achieve.

The cost of work is directly linked to speed. According to D&AD, seven out of ten agencies have not changed their billing methods even after AI has sped up part of the work. The benefits of greater efficiency have therefore so far fallen mainly to clients. The report highlights, in a positive light, those agencies which, rather than charging for the execution itself, seek to value decision-making and intellectual property.

It is precisely here that the report’s theme intersects with the wider debate on the agency business model. As production becomes faster and cheaper, an agency’s value is increasingly less dependent on the time required to create an output. Greater importance is being placed on the ability to decide what should be created in the first place and why it should be created.

Work should be training

D&AD sees one of the greatest risks in what the rise of AI means for junior roles. It is precisely the repetitive tasks that AI is now taking on first that used to be the way young creatives learnt their trade. By preparing drafts, layouts or conducting research, they gradually developed the judgement needed for further work.

The report therefore points out that AI is not only replacing work, but also training. If the junior tasks on which these skills were developed disappear, agencies must find another way to build them up in the new generation. According to D&AD, the solution is not to retain junior roles in their current form, but to consciously redesign them so that they focus more on critical evaluation, taste and cultural awareness.

“We must use AI to remove unnecessary barriers, whilst at the same time protecting those parts of the process where creative judgement is formed.”

Adam Barnett, VP EMEA & APAC at Shutterstock Studios

Unspoken rules are not enough

Another area highlighted by the report concerns the rules governing the use of AI. According to D&AD, brands and agencies have concerns about the ethical issues associated with AI, but many have not yet translated these into specific rules. According to the report, organisations that create their own AI frameworks and safe environments for experimentation achieve clearer decision-making and greater trust within teams.

The role of leadership is also linked to this. D&AD highlights a situation where leaders introduce AI tools that they themselves do not fully understand to teams that, at the same time, are not given clear direction. But how can they lead the use of a tool they have never used themselves? Leaders are therefore expected to try out AI for themselves in practice and to actively define the conditions under which it will be used.

When average work is so accessible

The report also mentions projects such as the open caption design system‘Caption with Intention’or the pain-mapping tool‘PainVisible’, where AI operates ‘invisibly’ behind the concept itself and helps achieve inclusivity and accuracy in solutions that would otherwise be difficult to scale.

D&AD CEO David Patton summed up the whole issue quite accurately: “AI has changed the nature of bad work. At first glance, it no longer appears slapdash or unoriginal. It is competent, polished and generic – and it is precisely this kind of output that is now readily available to anyone, anywhere. The real problem, however, arises a step earlier: how do we teach someone to distinguish between competent and exceptional work when competent work is the readily available standard all around us? This report is not merely an identification of the risk. With it, D&AD clearly positions itself not for or against tools, but in favour of human judgement, which they cannot replace.”

Source: aka.cz