We need to harness AI talent: Harshil Karia, Schbang

The first edition of the exchange4media Independent Digital Agency Connect (iDAC) conference and awards saw the leadership of the country’s top independent digital agencies gather with their industry peers to celebrate each other and their achievements and discuss the issues most pertinent to advertising and marketing in the digital era.

Starting off the event, Harshil Karia, Founder, Schbang, gave his Expert Opinion on ‘Digital Marketing In 2023: The Rise of AI and What it Means for Your Strategy.’

Beginning his address with a sample of a music track generated by AI which garnered over 25 million views within a day, Karia noted, “So the truth is that AI is here, it's powerful, and it's here to stay. Now, this is an example of something that AI has created, a piece of music that earned $12000 in royalties. The AI basically took an artist’s writing style together with music to release complete tracks and you're releasing, you're getting tons of views and you're getting tons of revenues. Now that's what AI has the potential to create.”

“I'm going to switch gears a bit from AI to the absolute truth of our business. And then there's an absolute truth to our business, which is (and some people may not like what I have to say) effectively a headcount business you know, we're a margin trading and a headcount business. So, why our business works is that in our four walls each of our companies within our four walls we enable a unique environment where minds work together with a unique combination of culture and systems to enable better productivity. So effectively, why the client hires us is because we can get more productivity per individual in our four walls versus what the same individuals would be in the client's walls,” he explained.

Karia went on to address the need to harness this AI. “It's actually an opportunity for us to reimagine the way we do business, to reimagine our culture to be able to integrate AI into our culture and our systems to be able to get more efficient with AI so that we can continue to maintain on that same headcount business or 30 to 35%. More productivity with the maintenance of the 20% margin, give or take,”

Pointing out that creative agencies have always been better at harnessing talent, Karia observed it is time to do the same with AI talent. “We are all good at being able to harness talent much better than another set of people which is why we have a reason to exist in our business. You add AI into the mix and we basically have to learn how to harness this AI talent better and I specifically call it AI talent because it's got the ability to produce this for the ability to create.”

Thereby, he said, AI was useful because it's a 24/7 creatively able machine or analytically able machine. “I'm using the word able deliberately, because yes, it is creative. It has the ability to be creative, but it cannot do anything if it's not harnessed or guided by somebody. Most of the design work that you're seeing, most of the media work that you're seeing or technology we're producing, have humans sitting on top of the AI.”

Karia went on to explain why AI wasn’t a death knell in a world with 8 billion thinking, living, creating human beings but another tool in our admittedly impressive arsenal to progress further in technology, business and everyday living.