For creatives, AI image generation is both muse and menace. It’s simultaneously handing unprecedented power to marketers and designers, while also stoking existential fears about job displacement and the future of human creativity.

Nicole Leffer, CMO and AI Advisor for DTC B2C as well as B2B and SaaS brands, helps marketing teams navigate the disruption. Though the technology is moving fast, in her view, there’s still plenty of room for creatives to lead—if they’re willing to adapt.

Now or never: "The cat is out of the bag with AI, and it’s not going back," says Leffer. "Creatives have a choice: be afraid and let it potentially destroy your career, or embrace it, learn it, and become the person who can control it." Owning the change—not resisting it—is what separates those who stay in the game from those who get swept off the board.

A huge leap forward: Leffer was immediately struck by the capabilities of recent AI image generation updates coming out of Google i/o. Having used earlier iterations like DALL-E, she found the improvements—especially with anything involving text or realistic-looking photography—"just absolutely huge." For marketers, the upgrade is more than cosmetic: The tools are now "significantly more useful for so many use cases," producing images that finally feel fit for professional work.

From hieroglyphics to high-fidelity: "You don't understand where we were," Leffer says, reflecting on how quickly the technology has evolved. "It was not that long ago that it looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics if you tried to ask it to write text." That kind of progress has made today’s tools genuinely exciting (and far more usable!) for real-world marketing needs.

Learning to walk: Despite the leaps forward, Leffer is pragmatic about the current limitations. "It's still not 100% perfect. There are issues that come up. It's still baby technology," she says. Users might notice quirks—like when "it cuts off the sides of your images" or the text gets "a little bit confused." And while it's now "a million times better for infographics," it's still not always the ideal choice.

The human guide: Leffer sees skilled creatives not as casualties of AI, but as its most effective collaborators. "The more you understand design—the vocabulary, the ability to describe it, the education, the eye—you can get 10 times better results out of it than someone who doesn’t have that," she explains. The opportunity lies in synergy. "There's definitely going to be a really amazing space for the creatives that can learn how to communicate with the tools to bring that same creative vision to life." Their value will come from "directing and guiding and taking advantage of how cool the technology is," says Leffer. "Companies still want the human, but assisted by AI to speed up the process."