A tool can generate an image. It cannot decide why that image should exist.
Much of the criticism directed at AI advertising is deserved.
A lot of the work is generic, overly polished and emotionally empty. We see products surrounded by liquid, flowers opening in slow motion, perfect faces and impossible worlds that look impressive for a moment but leave nothing behind.
The easiest conclusion is that AI cannot create meaningful advertising.
But I wonder if we are blaming the technology for something that begins much earlier in the creative process. What if the real problem is a lack of intention?
When the tool becomes the idea
Weak AI advertising often seems to begin with: let’s make an AI ad.
The technology becomes the concept. The goal is to prove what can be generated, so the work is built around spectacle rather than meaning.
But “made with AI” is not an idea, just as “filmed on a cinema camera” is not an idea.
The real questions should come first. What are we trying to say? Why does this story belong to this product? What should the viewer feel? Which detail will make the film specific rather than interchangeable with a hundred others?
If those questions have no answers, more detailed prompts will not solve the problem. They may produce a more beautiful image, but beauty without intention is still decoration.
Intention changes what we choose to show
Imagine a fragrance containing honey.
The immediate visual idea is obvious: golden honey dripping over a beautiful bottle. It communicates the ingredient, but not necessarily the experience of it.
Now begin somewhere else. A beekeeper once described the sound of bees and the smell released from the hive as something that gives her peace.
Suddenly, the story is no longer simply about honey. It is about the quiet relationship between a person and the living world around her. The sound of the hive matters. The movement of her hands matters. The pause before she lifts the frame matters.
One approach shows an ingredient. The other gives the ingredient a life.
AI could be used to create either version. The difference is not the tool. The difference is the intention guiding it.
Intention is more than a detailed prompt
Creative intention does not mean adding more adjectives or camera instructions. It means knowing why each choice belongs.
A film does not become human simply because it contains a person. It feels human when it reflects something genuinely observed: the faint shadow of eyelashes when someone walks toward the sun, a strand of hair entering their vision, the familiar movement of a hand or the way a scent can return someone to a memory without warning.
Technology can reproduce those details, but it cannot decide which ones matter to us. That decision comes from experience, attention and a point of view.
AI makes intention more important, not less
As beautiful images become easier to produce, technical polish becomes less meaningful on its own.
The ability to create almost anything does not remove the need for creative direction. It makes it more visible when creative direction is missing.
Perhaps this is why so much AI advertising feels empty. The technology is capable of filling every part of the frame, but no one has decided what the frame is truly about.
There is a simple test I keep returning to: if the technology disappeared, would there still be an idea worth making?
If the answer is no, the tool has probably replaced the concept. If the answer is yes, then the technology can serve the idea rather than becoming the entire reason for it.
This does not erase the real concerns surrounding AI. Questions of consent, transparency and the effect on creative work still matter. But dismissing every AI-assisted film as inherently empty prevents us from asking a more useful question: what standards should guide the people using it?
I do not want to defend careless AI advertising. I want to see what becomes possible when these tools are used with more care, emotional precision and purpose.
AI can generate an image. It cannot care why that image exists.
That responsibility still belongs to us.
