Want to enhance your creative abilities with AI? Looking for practical techniques for embracing AI throughout the creative journey, from initial concept to final product.
In this article, you'll discover how to use AI to expand your creativity.

Why Creatives Need to Embrace AI Now
The landscape of human creativity and marketing is experiencing a seismic shift with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Helen Todd, founder of Creativity Squared and an early pioneer in social media marketing, has witnessed this transformation firsthand.
Her journey into artificial intelligence began in October 2022 when a friend from OpenAI demonstrated an early version of ChatGPT.
“I always have creative projects and thought experiments that I play with to keep the creative juices flowing,” Todd explains. One such project was a television miniseries she'd been developing. When they input the first scene into ChatGPT, something remarkable happened. Within seconds, the action, the characters, and the dialog were all mapped out. That was when ChatGPT captured her imagination.
The impact of AI has been unprecedented. As Todd notes, “ChatGPT got a million users in five days and a hundred million users within two months.” This rapid adoption reminds her of the early days of social media marketing—a previous technological revolution that transformed how we communicate and do business.
Preparing for the Shift From the Information Age to the Imagination Age
Todd is particularly excited about the transition from what she calls the information age to the imagination age. She explains, describing a future where the creative process becomes increasingly seamless:
- MRI machines will translate thoughts into images
- Connecting to tools like Midjourney for design
- Linking to 3D printers for physical creation
Despite the current technological advances, Todd emphasizes the continued importance of human creativity and perspective in creative processes and references Will Reynolds's concept of the “sea of sameness” to emphasize the importance of unique perspectives.
The “sea of sameness” in the context of AI refers to the phenomenon where AI-generated content, particularly text and images, tends to lack originality and diversity, resulting in a large amount of very similar-looking output from multiple sources and brands.
If you don't lean into your perspective and your unique voice, your messaging will get lost in the same AI regurgitation everyone else uses.
The transition to the imagination age represents both challenge and opportunity. We'll be able to let artificial intelligence do the grunt work, so we'll be free to be creative and generate ideas that the LLMs can't. Those human-generated ideas will win in the imagination age.
Success in this new era will come not from resisting AI but from embracing it as a tool for amplifying human creativity and innovation. The key is maintaining authenticity while leveraging AI's capabilities to push creative boundaries further than ever before.
Todd has developed a sophisticated approach using multiple AI platforms to achieve the best results.
#1: Implement AI Policies: A Strategic Necessity
For organizations looking to leverage artificial intelligence effectively, Helen Todd strongly advocates for leadership-driven AI adoption. This approach ensures consistent implementation across the organization and provides clear guidelines for all employees.
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GET THE DETAILSPart of that implementation is having a clear AI policy that is part of a broader strategic vision is essential, the importance of which becomes clear when Todd discusses the competitive implications. As she puts it, if you don't implement proper AI strategies and policies, your competitors will gain a significant competitive advantage beyond efficiency gains to impact every aspect of business operations.
As you develop your AI policy, think long-term about how AI will impact every aspect of your business, not just marketing. While Todd doesn't prescribe a one-size-fits-all policy approach, she suggests considering several key elements:
- Tool Usage Guidelines: Policies should clarify which AI tools are approved for use and in what contexts.
- Content Creation Parameters: Clear guidelines about how AI can be used in content creation and what oversight is required.
- Data Security Protocols: Specifications about what data can and cannot be input into AI systems.
- Training Requirements: Structured approaches to ensuring team members understand AI tools' capabilities and limitations.
By implementing comprehensive AI policies early, organizations can ensure they're leveraging AI's benefits while managing potential risks and maintaining consistency across their operations. The key is to be proactive rather than reactive in developing these policies, as they form the foundation for successful AI integration.
While the approach to AI policy implementation can vary based on your industry and organizational needs, there are two primary approaches.
Many companies encourage their different departments to experiment with AI and test different tools as part of a company-wide task force. This approach involves identifying key AI ambassadors within the organization, empowering these ambassadors to lead adoption, testing various tools and techniques, and sharing learnings across departments.
Other companies, particularly those in industries with regulatory requirements or sensitive data concerns, must develop a stricter rollout process that ensures compliance to governing bodies.
#2: Build Your AI Toolkit: Essential Platforms and Tools
Todd offers a few pieces of advice for those just starting their journey with artificial intelligence.
First, accept that everyone is learning. Todd shared that even the executives of the Marketing AI Institute don't feel like they're on top of everything.
That leads to the second piece of advice: Spend time learning about artificial intelligence. Listen to podcasts, attend educational conferences, and seek other ways to educate yourself.

Finally, engage in hands-on experimentation with current and emerging tools. This exploration doesn't have to involve work-related tasking. Playing with these tools will help you understand how they work and what capabilities might be relevant to your work. The key is understanding that AI can help unlock and amplify your creativity.
Understanding which AI tools to use—and how to use them effectively—is crucial for creative success. Todd shared what she calls her “AI assistants”—a collection of tabs with different AI tools, each serving a unique purpose. Experiment with these tools to see which of them works best for you.
Core Language Models and Chatbots
ChatGPT: “ChatGPT tends to be maybe a little bit more creative,” Todd explains. She particularly values its voice feature for mobile interactions: “I can have voice conversations with the AI, which is particularly useful when I'm on the go or unable to type.”
Claude: Known for precision and larger file-handling capabilities, Claude excels at analyzing comprehensive documents. “You can upload the largest file size in Claude,” Todd notes, making it valuable for processing extensive content.
Perplexity AI: This platform stands out for fact-checking and truthfulness. “Perplexity AI is a little bit better for the truthfulness part of all of it,” Todd explains.
Meta AI and Google Gemini: These platforms round out Todd's core toolkit, offering additional perspectives and capabilities.
Presentation and Content Tools
Beautiful.ai and Gamma.app: These tools revolutionize presentation creation. “You can take previous presentations to train it for the style,” Todd explains. “You can upload an article and turn it into a presentation… in minutes.”
OpusClip: This tool specializes in repurposing long-form video content. “OpusClip assigns both a ‘viral score' and a ‘hook score' to different parts of your video, helping you identify the segments most likely to capture audience attention,” Todd describes.
Castmagic: Particularly useful for audio content repurposing, Castmagic helps transform spoken content into various formats. “The tool transcribes the audio immediately and then automatically creates content for various platforms, including tweets, LinkedIn posts, and Instagram captions,” Todd explains.
Notion AI: Todd describes Notion as her “second brain,” using it to store and organize all the content she creates with other AI tools. “One key way I use Notion AI is to expand content. For example, you can highlight text in your notes and ask the AI to develop it into different formats, such as newsletters or listicles.”

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#3: Enhance the Creative Process With AI
The impact of artificial intelligence on creative processes goes far beyond simple automation. Todd shares several key ways she uses AI to enhance creativity.
Pro Tip: Treat AI tools like text-message-friends you're training through ongoing conversations. The more context you provide over time, the better the AI understands your needs and style.
When facing creative challenges, Todd recommends approaching AI as a collaborative partner. “If you can't articulate it, the magic with ChatGPT is that you can take any question you have and turn it into a question for these models,” she explains.

For example, when working on her book project “Farewell the Information Age, Welcome to the Imagination Age,” Todd is using AI for various aspects of research and development:
Initial Research: She uses AI to research questions like “How long did the Industrial Revolution take?” and “From when Ford had the idea of the car, how long before it was mass adopted?”

Content Development: Todd uses AI to help outline the book and related presentations, getting different perspectives on structure and content organization.
Creative Experimentation: Todd once asked AI to update Meghan Trainor's “All About That Bass” to “All About That AI,” demonstrating how playful interactions can lead to alternative creative options you can consider.
#4: Use AI for Strategic Content Creation
Despite AI's capabilities, Todd emphasizes the importance of human involvement, sharing that she consistently edits all AI output. Rather than relying on artificial intelligence to deliver content, she uses it as a critical partner, asking questions like:
- How can I improve this?
- How would you critique my writing?
- Where can this be better, and why?
Todd's approach to content creation involves the strategic use of multiple AI platforms for everything from titles to descriptions and content repurposing.
Content Title and Email Subject Line Development
To develop titles, she pastes all potential titles or subject lines into multiple AI models and asks each of them to determine which will perform best. She then compares the results to find the most highly rated version across all the AI models.
Please review these titles and tell me which will perform the best. Include the pros and cons of each title in your critique.
Podcast Descriptions
She also uses AI to optimize the creation of episode descriptions.
Please review this transcript and write a description modeled from these examples of previously written descriptions. [examples]
Content Repurposing
When using AI for content repurposing, Todd recommends analyzing high-performing content to understand what resonates with your audience before creating variations for different platforms.
Here are 12 examples of Instagram posts. The first six performed well, and the second six did not. Please analyze these posts to determine what resonates best with my audience and why. You will use this analysis to help me repurpose other content for Instagram.
Visual Content Development
For visual elements, Todd recommends using AI to create rough concepts that can guide human designers in producing a final design.
#5: How AI Will Force the Evolution of Content Creation, Distribution, and Funnels
The ways content is created, consumed, and distributed are fundamentally changing. Todd points to Will Reynolds' approach as an example of this evolution:
When he presented on optimizing your content for LLMs rather than just search engines, he told the audience he had pre-recorded the entire presentation, so they didn't need to take notes. He then shared a landing page for the presentation and gave the audience explicit permission to upload it to any LLM for summarization if they wanted to consume his content that way.
This approach represents what Todd calls the democratization of the consumption of content, where users can engage with material in whatever format works best for them:
- Video format
- Audio version
- Short-form content
- Long-form content
- AI-processed summaries
- Different language versions
- Various comprehension levels
Traditional marketing funnels are also being disrupted by AI accessibility and will collapse, especially if they rely on online content. For example, instead of watching your lead-generating webinar, people will scrape your content, put it into a public LLM, and then ask the AI to summarize it in a few bullet points.
This change is quickly requiring a new approach to content strategy and marketing. For example, social media professionals may soon be managing synthetic media, which will require new areas of expertise in the marketing industry, such as clone strategists, prompt engineers, etc.
Helen Todd founded Creativity Squared, a podcast and newsletter focused on exploring the intersection of AI and creativity. She's also the founder of Sociality Squared, a marketing agency focused on social media. Todd co-hosts Cincy AI, the largest AI meetup in Ohio. Connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Other Notes From This Episode
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