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Marcus Thomas Vice President and Executive Creative Director Stephanie Burris  was interviewed recently by AdForum's India Fizer exploring opportunities and challenges facing the industry, the agency and creative in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Below is an excerpt of the interview September 30, 2025 interview.

How is your agency approaching internal guidelines around AI use? Are there specific principles or guardrails you’ve implemented to guide decision-making?

For us, it’s a mix of curiosity, curation and caution. In 2023, we established an AI Working Group with cross-disciplinary representation from every corner of the agency – strategy, creative, media, development, production, PR, analytics, etc. This group is constantly experimenting with emerging platforms and tools, assessing their potential, and identifying implications for our people, our processes and our clients.

Working with our technology and legal teams, we evaluate platforms (not just for functionality, but for data privacy, security and brand safety). We maintain a living, breathing AI Use policy that outlines approved platforms and use cases, ensuring that AI is used ethically, responsibly and in ways that not only accelerate the work, but elevate it, too.

How are you navigating the topic of transparency with clients when it comes to AI-generated content?

We openly communicate about how and why we’re using AI, and what the potential benefits, limitations and risks are, both with ourselves and with our clients. Of course, it’s important that our clients understand the ownership and legal considerations of the generated content. But they also need to understand the role of the human(s) in the process – the ideation, the brand knowledge, the oversight. We don’t want AI to be seen by our clients as a black box, but we don’t want it to be seen as a shortcut either. It’s a tool among many other tools in our toolkit – and it may not always be the right one.

What role do you think agencies should play in advising clients on AI-related brand safety and reputational risk?

Choosing to use AI in content creation is no different than selecting the right talent or music track. It’s a creative decision that reflects on the brand and what it stands for. Just as we’re intentional about what appears in our ads, we must be equally intentional about how those ads are made.

AI has the potential to enhance creativity, but it also comes with risks – from reinforcing biases, to displacing human artists, to coming across as inauthentic. We’ve seen brands face backlash when these choices aren’t made thoughtfully. As always, it’s our responsibility to guide our clients toward decisions that serve both their business goals and their brand values.

Where do you see AI’s strengths moving forward?

I’m certainly excited about the personalization at scale that AI makes possible. It opens up entirely new ways for audiences to interact with brands, ways that feel more relevant, more intuitive and more valuable. That’s a win for our clients, and even more so for the people they’re trying to reach.

But what excites me most is that AI will put a premium on human creativity. These tools are engines of mass creation. Now anyone can make content, and many will. To rise above the noise, brands will need truly original storytelling and creativity that defies category norms. Yes, the tools are evolving. But the need for bold thinking and big ideas is only going to grow.