I work in an industry where the latest AI sentiment is loud and clear. In this current day and age, especially when it comes to marketing to a Gen Z demographic, anything that can be visibly detected as AI-generated is shunned and scorned. Graphics, videos, and writings produced by LLMs are sniffed out a million miles away and have an overwhelming opposite effect of whatever marketing result they intended to have.

Basically, if we wanted to lose students at EWU (and if I wanted to get fired), we would use AI-generated marketing materials.

This attitude can easily be detected beyond higher ed as well. Have you noticed the backlash that occurs in social media comments whenever a local restaurant uses an AI-generated graphic?

But as I have written countless times before, that doesn’t mean we don’t use AI. My team uses LLMs for brainstorming, organizing, and refining. However, we don’t use it to create.

How do you define the creative use of AI?

From time to time, I hear the following argument: If you don’t get on board with AI, you are going to fall behind.

I think this has a lot of truth to it. In fact, I think the above statement is already antiquated. It should read like this: If you didn’t get on board with AI years ago, you are most likely severely behind.

But I think sometimes we are confused about what “getting on board” and “being left behind” means. If you are using AI to automate processes, identify errors in code, or to cross reference spreadsheets, it sounds like you are using the technology to optimize and improve your work.

However, if your idea of “crushing it on AI” is using it to spit out horrific graphics, corny songs, and cliché LinkedIn posts I think the ship has sailed.

The AI generation honeymoon ended a year ago. SLOP is real and savvy consumers won’t be persuaded or entertained by it. We can’t trick ourselves into thinking that is ingenuity. In the same way that an actor always receives more credibility when he does his own stunts, the same holds true for marketing departments who do their own work.

And I would argue that this expectation is quickly spreading to non-professionals as well…that fast food restaurant included. Using AI to plan and refine is smart. Using AI to spit out slop is not. Don’t Blink.

Another random thought related to my new status as a 40-year-old entered my head the other day.

Am I too old to listen to Top 40 music?

Back in the day I served as the DJ for University of Montana major sporting events. Back then it was cool that I knew all the hot songs at the time. But do I need to lay off now that I am 40? (photo is of me at the music corner during a Griz basketball game in the early 2010s. In addition to other gameday duties, I would play all the music).

Growing up as a kid, my parents hated the mainstream music I listened to with my siblings. They would never be caught dead listening to Top 40 songs of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

My mom and dad rightfully controlled the car radio and they listened to the local Oldies station and a classic rock station. Perhaps they jammed out to the “music of the day” when we weren’t in the car but I never saw them willingly tune the radio to the popular/modern stations.

Now I definitely listen to my own version of “oldies” as I have outlined before. Sirius stations like Pop2K, Y2Kountry, PopRocks, and ‘90s on 9 are programmed into my car. But if I am listening to music while driving, I usually dial up Hits 1 (Top 40) first.

So now that I am 40, should I refrain from listening to Sombr, Taylor Swift, and Post Malone? Should I mute Shaboozey and Harry Styles? After 11 years should I retire “Brent’s Top Songs of the Year”?

Please dear readers, let me know your thoughts. Is it just too weird for a 40-year-old dude to listen to the music that my 9-year-old prefers? Don’t Blink.