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One day at Johor Bahru’s Bazar Karat, I ran into Michael Jackson mid-Moonwalking. I seem to recall my 9 year old self, "Wait - didn’t Michael Jackson died a few years ago?". It turns out that particular Michael Jackson was just an impersonator. He did a great job, but if there was an option to get the real MJ vs the impersonator, almost always 99 out of 100 would choose the real Michael Joseph Jackson (the 1 is the impersonator himself).
Enter 2025. You are a business owner and all your branding needs are met with typing a few sentences, hitting enter and voila! — your brand just had a logo, some product photos and a few assortment of captions for your new posts all within the span of a single minute — all for the cost of nothing. So why pay?
The Michael Jackson impersonator probably took a couple of years of hard work to get to that skill level where people would actually take the time out of their day to stop and admire his performance and even maybe even get them to donate some of their hard earned pay for his astounding performance. So its about hard work? Since Chat GPT and Gemini look so effortless when they are cranking out a flawless, pore-less photo of you on an imaginary yacht overlooking an imaginary Mediterranean island looking all bougiee, they shouldn’t be used at all?
The debate isn't about the effort, or the hard work nor the cost; it's about creative ceiling. AI is a powerful mimic, but a professional creative is an original source. Superiority in advertising, or any form of creative endeavor is found in the unique, non-replicable human element that compels a shared emotional experience.
The effectiveness of high-value advertising, particularly for luxury goods like perfume, rests entirely on emotional resonance and brand trust. A machine has no lived experience, no fear, no joy, and thus, no soul to infuse into the image. Studies show that when consumers are aware a creative work is AI-generated, their perception is negative compared to a less polished work attributed to a human creator. The audience implicitly detects the lack of a human artist's deliberative intention and emotional core.
A human photographer crafts a visual anchor that taps into this deeper cognition, creating a profound, memorable connection. AI only processes patterns; a human touch breaks them to forge the unique, "weird" visual hooks necessary for maximum engagement.
Superiority in advertising, or any form of creative endeavor is found in the unique, non-replicable human element that compels a shared emotional experience.
AI's strength is its ability to synthesize existing data; it produces the average of everything it has seen. This reliance on history makes true, innovative originality impossible. Creativity in a viral context requires originality and innovation that breaks conventions.
A professional, using intuition and cultural awareness, delivers the unique ideas and point-of-view (POV) that form the backbone of a successful content strategy. They introduce cultural nuances, subtle irony, or a calculated disruption that AI’s algorithmic logic cannot conceive. For Seputeh Rasmi, this means transforming a simple perfume bottle shot into an evocative, cult-hopping piece of art that grabs attention far beyond the initial niche. This is not mere computation; it is purposeful storytelling that a human guarantees, delivering superior aesthetic value and, crucially, greater purchase intention than machine-made substitutes.
AI provides cheap speed, but that speed generates commodity content, not conversion-driven creative assets. The money you "save" on AI is wasted when the resulting content fails to build brand recognition, connect emotionally, or legally protect your assets. The cost of a professional is an investment in strategic originality that generates revenue, while the cost of AI is often a sunk expense in disposable visuals. An impression of the creative is not a creative endeavor, but merely a mediocre attempt to imitate intention and authenticity.
AI is optimized for efficiency and churning out variations, a strategy that only achieves high views. Quality is earned through unique ideas and emotional resonance, not algorithmic perfection. AI, by definition, replicates patterns from its training data, making it fundamentally incapable of generating the truly unconventional or culturally subversive creative required to break the scroll and encourage sharing organically. A human photographer delivers the calculated, distinct visual language that converts a casual viewer into a sharing advocate.
AI should not be a replacement, but a companion to the assets that we’ve indulged in the creative process. “Creative AI” itself is an oxymoron, where the definition of creativity blurs between what we can and cannot take credit from it. Where is the human touch that we so implore as we proclaimed as the “end times” and the fight with AI through misuse of explicit content has and continues to end lives of the innocent?
Your story matters and to just dilute the flavor of your brand through cheapskates and a few lines of prompt into an AI chat box risks your true colors from being shown. Vulnerability cannot be expressed by a machine, how close it mimics, it’s just not the real thing.
If you’re not convinced yet, head on to our gallery. You’ll see the difference.
