Using AI to help generate ideas

As a former advertising creative director, I've helped to lead teams of creatives whose main job was to come up with ideas. And I've seen my old industry talk about how AI just can't generate ideas yet or at least it can't come up with ideas that are any good. However, I don't necessarily believe that's true. The problem often lies in the prompts that people give ChatGPT. These prompts are nearly all was worse than the brief that a human creative would receive. Far worse. And then they point to the results and say, "Aha, there's the proof that the bots aren't as good as us." But the main thing we're seeing is the difference between good briefs and bad ones. Giving an AI a good brief delivers far better results. This prompt doesn't just ask ChatGPT to come up with generic ideas. It goes a step further by requesting a typical ideas, which is the job of a skilled, creative person. They are aiming to come up with something fresh rather than something derivative because you don't get attention or awards by simply replicating what's already been done. So let's see what happens when we provide the AI with a better brief. So I'll paste the prompt in and read it to you. "You're a highly experienced and awarded creative thinker with the ability to come up with fresh and different ideas. I want you to provide five unexpected ideas about {subject}. These ideas should not use the typical approach or copy what other people are doing." That's important. "Please present your ideas using markdown and bullet points, giving each idea a snappy title and then clearly describing the idea." Markdown just means that it'll be nicely formatted with bold headlines and things. "Once you have given me your ideas, I want you to ask me if I would like you to expand on any of them. Stop and wait for my response. If I select one of the ideas, I want you to expand on it by writing the following sections: title, one sentence description, full description, what makes the idea so good, how to make the idea happen and the resources needed to make it happen." Now, we could use this prompt for just about anything. I've tested it on like traffic management, on how to deal with social anxiety. You know, I've tested all sorts of different things, but I'm going to use, for our example here, something that I'm familiar with which is the world of advertising. And let me put in our subject here. Right. "We're launching a new self-driving car called 'The Pod.' Our research shows us that young families are the best market to focus on at the start. It gives them quality time together. We want some ideas for marketing stunts." Okay. Now, I have used this very brief. Two groups of people in workshops for a few years now, and I know the kind of ideas that humans come up with. So I'm interested to see how the AI compares with the kind of ideas that I know people tend to come up with for this exact same brief. So here we go. And as you can see here, it has stopped at Point 4 and I asked for five points. So what we do is we just say, "please continue." You don't need to be as polite as me. I like to say please because I like to give respect to the AI. So please continue and it will carry on. Well, I can tell you that some of the ideas that it's come up with here are ones that I haven't seen humans coming up with in the workshops that I've done, and that really surprises me, actually. And there's some really nice ones here. So I have seen a gourmet road trip. I have seen people come up with that idea. "The Pod's Time Machine: A Time-Travel Themed Adventure where you create an immersive time-travel experience inside 'The pod.'" I've not seen that one before. So let's see here, it's asking if you want to expand on any. That was idea Number 2. So can you please expand on the time machine idea? Right. "Title: 'The Pod's Time Machine.'" The one sentence summary. It's saying here, "Step into 'The pod's Time Machine' and embark on an immersive adventure that combines self-driving technology with augmented reality to transport young families through various historical eras, offering an educational and entertaining experience." Wow. Okay. I really, kind of, like that idea. Then gives us a full description. It tells us what makes the idea so good, which is great if you're then wanting to sell that idea to people, explain it to them. You can tell them, here is why this idea is so good. That's an important thing to do. How to make the idea happen. Okay. Here's all the things we need to consider, and then the resources needed. This is quite incredible. I used to manage departments of creatives and I've got to say that I would have been absolutely over the moon if creatives had presented this level of information to me when they came up with ideas. But, of course, you want them to explore broadly rather than deeply, but this is really incredible. So the first part of the prompt explores broadly, the second part explores more deeply, where expands on it. So it does both parts of the creative process for me, and I've got to say that with these ideas, I'm really pretty impressed. Now, I'm not saying that these ideas are going to win a heap of awards, I'm just saying that they're as good as many ideas I've seen presented to clients. My recommendation is that you use this prompt to generate a bunch of ideas and maybe they'll inspire you to do something better or at least give you a standard to try and beat. So go on. I'm challenging you here.