As India's advertising industry races to embrace artificial intelligence, Prasoon Joshi used his AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech to pump the brakes, with penetrating questions about where the profession anchors itself as machines grow more capable.
Speaking at the December 19 ceremony in Mumbai, Joshi, CEO and CCO of McCann Worldgroup India and Chairman, Asia Pacific, offered what may be the industry's most nuanced critique yet of AI's role in creativity. His concerns weren't about job displacement or technical capability, but something far more fundamental: the human judgment that determines what should be created, not just what can be.
Joshi began his exploration of advertising's future by establishing his position: neither technophobe nor uncritical enthusiast. "The future is in collaboration," he said. "The future is in collaboration between humans and humans, and humans and technology. I think AI is, for me, an ally, an extension, more than an expression."
He cited a concrete example of AI's potential benefits: reducing idea mortality. "A lot of the time, we have seen a lot of ideas die because they were not presented well or not fleshed out well. I think AI will make sure that we don't see ideal infanticide. We would see a lot of fleshed-out things people would be able to present, and that's, I think, a positive thing."
But then came the warning, delivered with poetic precision. "When we call about unconventional and say AI will give us unconventional stuff, I think AI defines a big mass," Joshi explained. "For example, if you want to say, write about destination and travel, then it can be said in a poem, safar hi manzil hai, enjoy the journey. This is cliche poetry. This is cliche unconventional. I would never write that."
He offered his alternative: "I might write, safar kyu karun jab manzil mujh hi mein rehti hai (why should I travel when the destination lives within me)." The difference is everything. The first line ‘the journey is the destination’ is what AI excels at producing: the most commonly accepted version of unconventional thinking. It's been said a thousand times, appears in countless Instagram captions, and feels vaguely profound without actually challenging anyone.
The second line inverts the premise entirely. It questions the assumption that travel is necessary, suggesting internal richness as an alternative. It's genuinely unconventional. The kind of thinking that makes people stop and reconsider their framework. "AI can take you the accepted unconventional, not unconventionally unconventional," Joshi warned. "That's the fear we have to figure out."
Joshi's second major concern addressed hyper-personalization: the industry's current fascination with using data to create individually tailored messages. He illustrated with an extended analogy: "Aap ghar mein baithe hain, kuch 10-12 saal, 15 saal se aapne gaana shuru kiya hai. Bada achha gaate hain (You've been at home, singing for 10-12 years, 15 years. You sing very well). Your friends think you sing beautifully. Today you're going to perform for them."
But then a childhood friend arrives, someone who knew you before your transformation. "You're about to sing, and all your new friends are asking you to sing. But this childhood friend says, 'tu toh gaani ki class mein piche jaata hai' (you used to sit at the back in singing class). He says you were the worst in class; they used to throw you out."
The punchline: "Now this is not required. This data is not required. This data is absolutely unnecessary. I was about to sing a beautiful song, and for the last 15 years, I have been singing. Now you've dug up a 30-year-old story and ruined everything."
The metaphor brilliantly captured the problem with total data access. Just because brands can know everything about consumers doesn't mean they should reference everything. Context matters. Timing matters. Some data, deployed at the wrong moment, destroys the very connection it's meant to create. "Is this excessive data? Is this unnecessary data? Is it required?" Joshi asked. "Does the consumer want this much of familiarity, or does the consumer want you to draw a line that knows this much about me?"
His conclusion: "I think we, as creative people, when we sit together, we know that line. Knowing too much might not be the solution. Knowing the right thing would be the solution and who will draw the line."
Joshi identified another concern: AI's ability to compress the creative process. "AI can cut down the process. A lot of our creative people love process." This wasn't nostalgia for inefficiency. Earlier in his speech, Joshi had defended confusion as creativity's fertile ground. "Confusion is the liminal space where ideas reside. Finality kills creativity," he said.
He also worried about "the degree of separation between the creator and the creation." If AI generates options that creatives then select and refine, does that change the nature of authorship? Does it reduce creative people to editors and curators of machine-generated content?
But Joshi's most urgent concern went beyond creative quality to ethical grounding. "The last thing is about where we are anchoring when we are saying AI is becoming so powerful. Where would we anchor AI? Who decides what is right, what is wrong?"
He offered a specific example: "Which is when you are doing moment marketing, are you exploiting the vulnerable moments of the consumer's life. Who draws the line and says no, this time this person is very vulnerable, we will not sell X product to this person at this time?"
This cuts to advertising's perennial ethical challenge, now amplified by AI's capabilities. Moment marketing can be brilliant or predatory, depending on the moment chosen. Should an alcohol brand advertise to someone whose social media indicates relationship troubles? Should a gambling app target someone showing signs of financial stress? Should a fast-food chain send promotions to someone whose health data suggests diabetes risk?
To illustrate his point about anchoring values, Joshi turned to Anton Chekhov's story ‘A Misfortune’. In his retelling, a married woman becomes attracted to her husband's friend, who manipulates her through indirect communication. When the friend finally meets with her, she acknowledges her attraction but chooses to stay with her husband.
"She says, 'I am completely taken by you. I know what you are doing. I am enchanted. But you know what, I will go for the man I am with. Because he has that innocence and love, you have manipulation," Joshi recounted. "Now this call has come from anchoring the value system in some place. Where are we thinking AI is going to anchor us?"
The story worked as a metaphor: the friend represents AI's seductive capability, the husband represents human values of transparency and authenticity. The woman's choice, despite her attraction, represents the conscious decision to privilege human values over manipulative efficiency. But Joshi's point was darker: this choice required human consciousness and values already in place. What happens when the choosing entity is itself the AI?
Throughout his speech, Joshi kept returning to what machines cannot replicate: the messy, vulnerable, uncertain human experience that creates genuine connection. "The most beautiful thing about us is that the human being is about," he said, the sentence trailing off suggestively. Earlier, he'd articulated what he called advertising's core truth: "We are fundamentally very, very vulnerable people. When a creative person tells you a story, be patient, be kind. Because that person is exposing something very personal to you."
This vulnerability, the willingness to expose one's inner life in the service of communication, is what creates resonance. "If we become well-rounded as a profession, clients will stop coming to us," he'd warned. "We are vulnerable. And that's how it works. And vulnerability is what connects with the consumer." Can AI be vulnerable? Can it expose something personal? Can it risk genuine failure rather than statistically optimized mediocrity?
Joshi concluded this section with a poetic image from Dushyant Kumar: "Kaun kahta hai aasmaan mein chhed nahi ho sakta, ek patthar toh tabiyat se uchalo yaaron (Who says there can't be a hole in the sky, at least pick up a stone with conviction, friends)."
Near the end of his speech, Joshi offered one final formulation: "AI is all about what has been said." The implication hung in the air: human creativity is about what hasn't been thought yet. AI analyzes and recombines the existing; humans imagine the genuinely new. AI optimizes within known parameters; humans challenge the parameters themselves.
As the advertising industry gathers at a crossroads, Joshi's questions provide essential navigation. Not because he offers answers. But because he insists we must ask the questions at all. In an industry increasingly driven by speed, scale, and optimization, pausing to ask "who decides what is right?" might be the most radical act available.