AI in Design and ‘The Human Premium’
Recently, some of the design team visited the D&AD AI Accelerator, a part of the D&AD festival that formed a series of talks from a range of creative professionals from Design and Art Direction backgrounds.
At the recent D&AD AI Accelerator, professionals from various creative specialisms talked us through how they currently use AI within their creative processes, their thoughts on the rise of AI, and how they feel it is likely to affect the role of creatives and creative agencies in the future. We heard some really interesting stuff - and came away reassured that creatively, no one yet has it nailed on how to best integrate AI into the creative process.
The creative industry as a whole is very much in the experimentation phase of embracing this ever-changing technology, and the advice here is to invest the time in play and experimentation in order to find the tools worth implementing into workflows. The consensus remains however, that the key to success is learning what is worth automating, and what should remain innately human.
The Human Premium
This phrase, coined by Max Fry (EMEA Partnerships Lead, Shutterstock Studios) in the very first talk, was the thread running through the series, and one that really resonated with us, because it's a conversation we've already been having internally. Every speaker made the same point: creative agencies need to stop charging for time and start charging for expertise. When AI compresses the hours, billing for those hours stops making sense — and it also undersells what clients are actually paying for – taste, good judgement, originality, creativity, cultural intelligence – ‘The Human Premium’.
When AI tools are used in a creative workflow, the reality is that clients are not paying for the time it takes to generate options. They're paying for the knowledge, experience and judgement it takes to know which option is right for them, their brand, and their audience. Not to mention the training needed to keep up to date with the constraints and capabilities of an ever-changing medium.
AI exposes bad taste like never before – when AI is used badly it shows, which can be damaging for a brand. When the technology can produce something visually polished in seconds, the only thing that separates good work from forgettable work is the human judgement applied to it. As AI-generated content becomes more abundant, that judgement doesn't become less valuable. It becomes more.
Why this matters to us
This shift has had real implications on how we work at Embrace. It frames how we have conversations with clients, and informs how we structure our workflows and processes. It also makes a stronger case for the things we've always cared about — taste, craft, originality, judgement. Those aren't soft skills. right now, more so than ever before - they're the differentiator.
“AI has raised the floor – it’s made a lot of work easier, faster and more accessible, but it hasn’t yet raised the ceiling. The ceiling is still human, and everything that AI can’t replicate.”
Max Fry, Shutterstock Studios
We attended the D&AD AI Accelerator on 20th May 2026. Speakers included Max Fry (Shutterstock Studios), Rodrigo Sobral (Oliver Agency), Laura Jordan Bambach (Unchartered), and Wesley ter Haar (Monks), hosted by Becky McOwen Banks of Plain:ai.