Article appeared in PRWeek discussing Dr. Bant Breen’s thesis research.

Dr. Bant Breen successfully defended his PhD thesis, under the supervision of prof. Pere Masip, on the impact of AI on marketing and communications practitioners.  His thesis research results has been discussed in a recent article appeared in PRWeek.

Dr. Breen defended hir doctoral thesis entitled “I think, therefore I am…? An exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) marketing perceptions and practices” on March 10.

The thesis explores perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) by the advertising industry and contrasts those perceptions with the state of AI marketing development today. The advertising industry is an interesting focal point for a discussion regarding AI because it is one of the emblematic creatively focused industries, and creative is often viewed as an area where machines can only copy or support and not ideate.

The results show an industry cautiously interested in AI and its potential, but woefully unaware and unprepared for the challenges this technological leap-forward presents. The majority of participants in the study highlighted their limited understanding of AI. Out of the 440 respondents, the vast majority of the data fell in the lowest quartile, being in the 3/3.5 range out of 10. When asked how creative AI can be, participants consistently responded negatively, with an average of 3.0 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of how creative AI can become. When asked what jobs AI can replace, roles that received the highest number of mentions for “cannot be replaced by AI” were mostly creative, strategic or leadership. An astounding 82% of respondents said their companies did not offer training in AI.