Sara Eid, Regional Creative Director, Serviceplan ArabiaFor decades, the advertising industry has welcomed every evolution that reshaped how we communicate with audiences. We embraced television when it dominated attention, digital when the internet transformed media consumption, and social platforms when brands suddenly had to publish content every day instead of launching campaigns every season. Now, we are welcoming artificial intelligence (AI).
Across conferences, articles and industry podcasts, the message is largely the same: embrace AI. The reassurance is familiar too: AI is not here to replace us. But perhaps the more uncomfortable question is whether we might be willingly – and unconsciously – replacing ourselves.
The issue is not artificial intelligence itself. The real issue is how our industry chooses to position it.
Looking back, every era of advertising has faced its own dominant pressure with every stage of industry evolution. As agencies multiplied and competition intensified, the industry worried about the rise of mediocrity.
When client expectations accelerated and timelines shrank, agencies feared compromising craft in order to keep up. When social media introduced an endless stream of brand content, the concern shifted toward dilution and the temptation to prioritise quantity over quality.
Different technologies. Different pressures. The same enemy. Mediocrity. AI did not create this problem. However, it has amplified it.
AI is not a magic wand; it is a highly capable machine that has been in development for years and has now become widely accessible. But it is worth asking what problem it is actually solving for the advertising industry. Was the challenge a lack of artists, writers or ideas? Hardly.
Speed was never the main goal for evolution, but it was always percieved as a great benefit. Clients and brands wanted quicker turnarounds and constant cultural relevance. Agencies needed to move faster. But the truth is that speed was never really the problem. Once the industry realised it could move faster, it simply rode the wave. As a result, production cycles shortened, processes accelerated and content multiplied.
AI has now taken that acceleration even further. We are able to produce more assets, more captions, more versions and more content than ever before. Much of it is technically flawless and often indistinguishable. The danger is that the industry begins celebrating output rather than excellence.
Today, success is increasingly measured numerically: the number of assets produced, the number of posts delivered, the volume of content generated by fewer and fewer people.
The question is not whether we can produce more; the question is whether producing more actually improves anything – especially when our audiences are already bombarded by branded content every second.
When quantity becomes the goal, purpose inevitably fades. Advertising once aimed to persuade thoughtfully and build brands with meaning. Increasingly, the focus has shifted to capturing fleeting moments of attention or triggering quick transactions, regardless of long-term brand impact.
AI did not create this mindset, but it makes it dangerously easy to scale. It reminds me of walking into a clearance sale and buying everything because it feels like an opportunity. In reality, you only needed a toothbrush. The result is abundance. And abundance often leads to waste: waste of talent, waste of data, waste of substance and, ironically, waste of time.
Globally, the advertising industry has been wrestling with content abundance for years. Saudi Arabia, however, is at a different stage of its evolution. Our market is young, our transformation rapid and our creative voice only recently confident.
In less than a decade, Saudi advertising has undergone a cultural shift. We moved from cautious communication to expressive storytelling, from borrowed regional tones to narratives rooted in local culture.
Saudi women began appearing as protagonists rather than symbolic figures, and local humour, dialect and everyday life started to find their way authentically into campaigns.
This voice is still forming, which makes this moment particularly important. Artificial intelligence systems are trained on vast global datasets, which means their natural output tends toward global averages.
Without thoughtful leadership, the risk is not innovation but homogenisation. And Saudi’s voice is too young to disappear into algorithmic sameness.
The real question, therefore, is not about AI. It is leadership. For a creative leader, the potential of AI may lie in freeing time for deeper thinking, stronger ideas and better storytelling. For a cost-focused manager, the opportunity may look different: producing the same output with fewer people.
Both perspectives exist within the industry today. But their long-term consequences are not the same. One strengthens creativity. The other industrialises mediocrity.
Saudi advertising has proven it can grow fast. The next challenge is ensuring it grows wisely.
Artificial intelligence will accelerate, whatever direction we choose. It can free human creativity or it can quietly normalise average work at unprecedented scale.
Our industry has finally found a voice that feels authentically Saudi, culturally specific, confident and evolving. Protecting that voice now matters more than ever. Because AI will not decide the future of creativity. Leadership will.
By Sara Eid, Regional Creative Director, Serviceplan Arabia
