AI Won’t Steal Your Job. Your Refusal to Embrace It Might

Blog post by Pat Berry

Pat Berry is a creative production leader with 20+ years of experience helping brands and agencies build smarter content operations and produce standout campaigns. He’s led teams driving innovation across everything from traditional production to emerging tech like AI, AR/VR, and Web3. Pat’s held senior roles at Kimberly-Clark, Edelman, Razorfish, Leo Burnett, and co-founded digital agency Colossal Squid. He is also the founder and editor of The Ad Stack (theadstacker.com), an industry newsletter focused on AI in advertising, and a frequent voice on the evolving landscape of generative content.

Producers and Creatives who ignore AI aren’t protecting the craft.

They’re walking away from it.

My mother-in-law passed away the other week. My beloved wife asked if I would have time to pull together a memorial video piece for her. I told her it would be no problem. “I can just AI the whole thing.” Kind of like phoning it in. I thought about all the software I own: Topaz, Adobe Creative Cloud, all of it. So, I thought I could knock it out in part of a night by allowing the CPU do most of the work.

And as I progressed using these tools, I felt a connection. A love for this person that demanded I be present. All of me. This required me to be involved in every step, every decision, regardless of the software approach. 

I used AI all over the place. I began restoring photos that were 70 years old. Reducing photo wrinkles and damage. Colorizing things that had always been black and white. Adding color makes me feel closer to the person—closer to reality—though I grew up shooting exclusively black-and-white on 35mm. And so instead of having AI kick this out in part of a night, I spent a week, seemingly during all waking hours, handcrafting this message of goodbye. From me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is AI in a nutshell. It’s about choices. Acknowledge it. Embrace it. Add it to your ammo bag. And go make some great work.

I look at Generative AI like how I view 3D. It’s an arrow in your quiver, but will you use 3D all the time? On everything? God, I hope not. But if it’s the right tool for the creative? If you're the accomplished producer that you probably are, you will fight to the end to embrace it and use it on the right project.

So, how should AI be any different?

A.I. is a tool.

The idea that AI is some foreign invader coming to replace us misses the point entirely. What it is, and what it’s always been, is a tool. A powerful, evolving, sometimes awkward, sometimes jaw-dropping tool. And just like the camera, the Avid, the drone, or the DaVinci panel, it can either amplify your craft or collect dust while someone else makes magic with it.

We’re not talking theory anymore. AI is deep in production:

• Drafting scripts.

• Generating storyboards.

• Recutting spots for every platform in a matter of hours.

• Translating VO into twelve languages with lip-sync accuracy.

• Building rough cuts overnight so you can focus on nuance, not noise.

Clients are noticing. Budgets are noticing. Your competitors are noticing. The question isn’t whether AI belongs in your workflow. It’s whether you’re still pretending you can out-edit the clock.

Is AI the answer to everything?

Not even close. Yes, it possesses great potential for efficiencies with budget and time. But is it really? Not necessarily. Saving time as producers know means more time for the age-old activity of “pixel f*cking.” More iterations. “More of this.” “Less of that.” “No, swap them.” More time to iterate for creative. For Account. For people in the room yet to be identified. For more read this.

I understand the hesitation. The anxiety. That gnawing feeling that if a machine can write, render, and revise, where does that leave you?

But here’s the thing: if you’re a real content creator, whether producer or creative, you’re a builder, a fixer, and maker. YOU already know the work was never about the tools. It’s about the taste. The judgment. The gut-check at 2 a.m. when everyone else has gone home and the cut still isn’t working

AI can’t feel that. You can.

And that’s your edge. Always has been.

Allow me to be blunt.

If you refuse to use AI out of pride or fear or inertia, let me be blunt: you’re making it easier for someone else to replace you. Not with a bot, but with a human who’s willing to use one.

Start simple. Use AI to rough your scripts, sort your dailies, prep alt cuts. Colorize something old and see if it changes how you feel about it. Let it help you get to the creative part faster, not skip it.

The producers who will thrive in the next five years aren’t the ones screaming into the void about “the old ways.” They’re the ones who still care deeply about the craft and can move at machine speed when the job calls for it.

Because when it’s go-time on a deadline and the client wants four aspect ratios and two languages by tomorrow, nobody cares how you got it done. They care that it’s brilliant.

So no, AI won’t take your job.

But your unwillingness to even open the door? That just might.

What You Can Do Now

Start small. Start smart. Start now.

You don’t need a PhD in machine learning to use AI on your next project. These tools are already battle-tested in commercial production. Pick one. Add it to your kit. Let it earn its keep.

Need ideas on where to begin? Download this. It’s simple. And it’s a start.