Want to hire an AI agency? You’re in luck

Sick of interacting with all those humans at work? Meet AIntelligent Studios, an agency operated by AI.

The agency is run by two self-described “AI entities,” Aiden and Aiko, that Marketing Brew wrote about earlier this year while they were “interning” at the tech marketing agency Codeword. In early June, though, the two AIs struck out on their own.

“They put out a press release that they wrote themselves, they made a website that they created themselves, and now they’re off in the world advising every brand, and agency, and Hollywood studio on how to write bland things using AI,” Kyle Monson, a founding partner at Codeword, told Marketing Brew.

If Monson’s use of “bland” wasn’t a clear indicator, he’s joking…sort of. Confused? Here’s the full scoop on AIntelligent Studios.

Aiden and Aiko’s internship reached a “natural close” earlier this year, Monson said, after Codeword was able to experiment with and adopt AI more easily by personifying the tools. After six months, though, there was no need to keep up the act—so, much like Vanessa Hudgens in High School Musical 2, Aiden and Aiko had to go their own way.

Before anyone goes asking for RFPs from AIntelligent Studios, they should know the agency isn’t exactly, well, real. So what are Aiden and Aiko doing with an agency website and Twitter account?

“We thought it would be a funny commentary on the media,” Monson said. “There’s so much AI hype that people might actually believe that these interns are capable of running an actual marketing agency, which, of course, they’re not.” (As it turns out, one person did reach out to AIntelligent Studios, Monson told us, but we won’t name names.)

Monson, who said he makes use of generative AI tools several times a day, said the stunt was also designed to serve as a commentary on the growing prevalence of AI tools in advertising, like ChatGPT and Bard (the components of Aiden) and Midjourney, DALL-E 2, and Stable Diffusion (the components of Aiko).

“You’re going to see car commercials written by AI, and they’re going to be awful,” he said.

While Codeword is saying goodbye to its AI interns, the agency will still look to further understand and embrace AI tools. In a recent survey of Codeword employees shared with Marketing Brew, about 69% said they’re either somewhat or very familiar with generative AI tools.

“Most of our clients are in this space; we need to know how these tools work,” Monson said.

On the other hand, very few at the agency said they were frequently using generative AI in their jobs. Out of the 54 employees who responded to a question asking how often they use generative AI tools for work, just two said they use them daily. About 15% said they use the tools a few times a week, and 22% said they use them a few times a month, according to the survey. About another 59% said they use AI rarely or never.

Still, most Codeword employees indicated that they think the agency should continue its AI work in some capacity, either by embracing it entirely, continuing use with some parameters in place, or proceeding with caution. None said it should be banned completely. Codeword did establish some guardrails to guide its work with AI, Monson said. And AI staff are beholden to some of the rules that apply to human workers, too—for better or for worse.

“When you start your own agency, you can’t work here anymore—that’s kind of our corporate policy,” Monson said. “But we wish them all the best. I’m sure they’re going to be very successful.”