AI Job Reduction & Your Wallet

Right v. Wrong in a Capitalist World

Yes. Money. We love it, dream of it, and dedicate 3/4 of our lives pursuing it like a kid chasing their crush on the playground. So, when a new thingy pops up in the world that saves us money do we hesitate to jump in? Nope. We cannonball right into those waters. The thingy I’m speaking of, as if the title of this post didn’t clue you in, is artificial intelligence. We’re in it and it is as big of a cost and time saver as they say. Yay.

But sooner or later there’s the pesky nuisance of that drunken woodpecker called a conscious that lands on your shoulder to remind you that those cost savings have a real world effect. And that is the livelihood of our fellow creatives. This is not something I take lightly, at all. Conundrum. How can we honor our friends and peers and still take advantage of AI productivity benefits??? Here’s what we came up with.

We recently worked on a production for an international food chain. I know, there’s a luxury car for the image in this post, but the car draws you in better than a freakin pizza. Anyway, the project was to shoot the products in studio, convert them to photoreal 3D models using artificial intelligence, then build marketing assets using the models. Seeing if customers could tell the difference. Mission Success!

We accomplished saving the client multiple productions and created a lightning fast speed-to-market process for new assets for at least the next few years. Here comes the flipside of the coin. The sky went grey when we realized we also screwed our photo team, studio, stylists, and production managers out of multiples shoots and gigs. As excited as we were for cracking this nut, we also had this new reality to confront.

As with all new things, a new set of expertise is required. There’s a lot of artificial intelligence specific nuance in what our team learned. And just as every photographer charges different usage prices (print, web, broadcast, etc) our solution to doing right by our team is the same. Bring your expertise and…

CHARGE 4-5x YOUR NORMAL RATE FOR AI RELATED GIGS

Boom.

Thanks for reading,
Morgan

Please email me at OceanAndCakeCreative@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or criticisms.