Our company ‘hired’ two AI interns for 6 months. Here’s what we learne

Six months ago, our marketing agency Codeword launched its internship program featuring AI interns, including Aiden (our “editorial intern”) and Aiko (our “design intern”). In short, Aiden and Aiko were Codeword’s attempt to figure out how generative AI can integrate with our agency’s creative teams.

We used AI tools to develop their names and faces, included Aiden and Aiko in our team directory, and referred to them by name frequently over the past half year. We even paid them, like all responsible intern programs do. (We’re donating $7,200, the equivalent of two part-time intern salaries, to Anita B, the org that runs the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conferences.)

Our goals for the program were to figure out what these generative-AI tools can do, push our team to figure out what they can do with these tools, make a little noise, and share our learnings with the industry. Now that the program’s wrapping up, here’s how we did on these goals and what we learned:

1. What AI is (and isn’t) good at

Look, we’re a marketing agency. “Can this tech help us do better work for our clients?” is always top of mind when new tools and technologies come out. If we can save our clients money and do better work for them faster, we have a responsibility to do so. With generative AI, there are a number of ways we can do that. Research, gut checks, figuring out best practices, all the formulaic work that requires time but not creativity. The rote work that’s necessary but doesn’t add a ton of real value. Let the robots do that stuff.

For example, in the past few weeks, I’ve asked AI tools for help creating a launch checklist for a campaign, sample elements for a new client landing page, revise a team note with a punchier tone, and naming options for a new product.

Did I need help with any of that stuff? Nah, I’ve done all those things on my own 100 times. What gen AI gave me was a quick gut check, filled in a missing piece or two, and then I moved on with my day. Even a few minutes saved here and there can make a difference for me.

That seems like the highest, best use for these tools, at least for the foreseeable future, which is why I don’t think we need to be scared about AI replacing creative jobs or creative teams. Because here’s the thing: Marketing and branding are about standing out and differentiating. Creativity. New ideas that have never been done before. AI isn’t good at that. It can remix and rehash and find the baseline, most formulaic solution to a problem. There’s definitely a use for that in the marketing industry, but it’s not generally what our audiences and clients want from us.

2. Pushing adoption of AI

Integrating new tools into a team’s workflow is difficult. Habits change hard, and “maybe this new technology will make your work easier” isn’t a very compelling sales pitch for busy people.

We were hoping that by wrapping AI in a clever package with names and faces, we could make the tech feel more approachable, like a team member instead of just another open tab in a cluttered browser. I’m committed to the idea that, as a tech marketing agency, we need to be on the leading edge of agencies with AI expertise, and familiarity with these tools will be a valuable skill for our team members throughout their career.

After six months, we have a lot of work to do to further integrate generative AI into our day-to-day work. In a recent internal poll, roughly 69% of Codeword respondents said they are “somewhat familiar” or “very familiar” with generative AI tools. But actual usage varies widely. While nearly 20% used it at least a few times a week, about 24% said they used it very rarely, while 33% said they never used it at all for work.

I suspect these numbers will skyrocket as Google integrates Bard and other gen-AI tools into Google Workspace, the tech backbone of our agency. Until then, actual usage by the team will likely be more split than I was expecting.

And along with pure utilization numbers, we realized we needed to set some guardrails for how the team uses generative AI in our work. Which led us to create this collection of general usage guidelines, including taking responsibility for accuracy and protecting our clients’ proprietary information.

3. Making noise

Codeword is a small agency. We don’t make ad campaigns or play the awards game, so it’s not easy for us to get headlines with trade press, much less the national media. And our little experiment with Aiden and Aiko blew up around the world, with coverage in Axios, ABC News, and lots of other media. It put our agency in front of a whole lot of people who’d never heard of us. (Not bad for a creative concept we developed in less than a week with no production budget.)

And while the noise is great, this really was an actual initiative with actual learnings for the agency. I expect we’ll have an edge in this space going forward, which was our main goal to begin with.

Kyle Monson is a founding partner at Codeword, a tech marketing agency.

A version of this article previously appeared on Medium.