Content creation
Creative strategy
May 27, 2025
In 2024, Adobe published a bold and widely cited report on the future of creative work in the AI era: Generative AI Creative Productivity. If you’re tasked with making creative decisions for your business, we strongly recommend you read that report.
It laid out a vision that felt equal parts inspiring and inevitable: Generative AI (GenAI) would transform how content gets made and revolutionize the role of its creators. Marketers and creatives would produce more assets in less time, deadlines would shrink, budgets would stretch, and—best of all—quality would rise alongside productivity.
That report quickly found its way to the desks of many marketing leaders under pressure to scale, and served as a blueprint for how technology could solve one of the most persistent challenges in content: the widening gap between demand and capacity.
But now, with more than a year of real-world adoption behind us, it’s time to ask a follow-up question: Did those predictions actually hold up?
At Amato Consulting, we’ve been testing these ideas in the field. We’ve used GenAI to accelerate client timelines, guided enterprise clients in adopting AI-assisted creative workflows, and experimented with scalable GenAI content systems. In this article, we’ll break down our experiences with GenAI for content, what Adobe got right, and what this means for you.
What were Adobe’s big bets?
Intended to be more than a trendspotting piece, this report offered a forecast for how creative teams and content leaders would operate in the “near future,” which is now our present. Based on surveys with hundreds of marketers and creatives, Adobe outlined a number of expectations for how GenAI would reshape the content landscape. Here are the core five:
Content demand would explode, forcing teams to produce more assets, in more formats, across more channels than ever before.
Timelines would compress. AI tools would accelerate every step of the creative process, from brainstorming to final delivery, making “real-time marketing” more feasible.
Creative quality would improve, rather than decline as industry commentators initially feared. With GenAI tools acting as co-pilots, creatives would have more room to experiment and iterate within budget.
Content costs would decrease. By automating repetitive tasks, AI would allow teams to do more without growing headcount or stretching budgets.
Team structures would evolve, but humans wouldn’t be replaced. Instead, creatives would shift into higher-value roles with AI helping to handle the volume.
At the time, these predictions felt both well-calibrated to the creative industry’s hopes and entirely out of touch with its expectations. AI was both the shiny new growth lever and the doomsday vector for coming layoffs. Of course, the leap from potential to practice is rarely clean. But, as we’ve seen over the past year, one side was much closer to the truth than the other.
Reality check #1: content volume and speed
“72% of non-creatives and 63% of creatives feel their company is asking them to take on more projects while both (60%) agree their company is asking them to complete those projects faster.”
What Adobe got right
Adobe was absolutely right that content demands would skyrocket. From product imagery to paid ads to hyper-personalized email sequences, enterprise marketing teams are producing more content than ever before. And GenAI now plays a key role in how they keep up.
L’Oréal, Puma, and other enterprise brands have already proven that AI can dramatically increase creative output. L’Oréal now creates hundreds of localized marketing assets in a fraction of the time and Puma uses AI to generate region-specific product imagery.
In each case, content isn’t just higher-volume, it’s also being made faster, more diverse, more targeted, and more scalable than legacy production cycles would allow.
What Adobe missed
It’s not just about volume and speed. Velocity without structure created new headaches as many companies underestimated the internal friction caused by sudden content scale. That friction bloated review cycles, increased asset management issues, and overwhelmed creative teams with an avalanche of revision requests for problems found during QA of AI-generated content.
Adobe’s optimism also glossed over the operational challenge of integrating AI into existing workflows. Teams that lacked the right infrastructure—or didn’t have a partner to help bridge the gap—found themselves struggling to turn AI-generated drafts into on-brand, ready-to-publish creative.
What this means for you
Speed is great. But, without the right systems, speed quickly becomes chaos. Businesses need to not just increase content volume and speed, but to do so intelligently. That means building production workflows that scale with control, from prompt libraries and review checkpoints to multi-format content generation aligned to brand voice.
Accelerating the move from experimentation to execution is just as important as accelerating the pace of content creation.
Reality check #2: creative quality and brand integrity
“It’s no longer about just having the best creative tools to create content quickly. Instead, it’s about seamlessly bringing the best people together to create unique, differentiated ideas that enable organizations to stand out in today’s hyper competitive landscape.”
What Adobe got right
Many industry commentators feared that GenAI would flood the market with low-quality, off-brand content. Adobe, however, said that that likely wouldn’t happen—and Adobe was right. In fact, many teams found that AI helped them generate stronger first drafts, more visual variations, and new creative directions that they wouldn’t have explored without it.
Companies like Levi’s are using GenAI for rapid ideation and draft generation, then applying human oversight to polish and align that content with brand standards. The result is faster timelines and maintained or increased quality. In one survey, two-thirds of creative processionals went on to say AI tools actually helped them make better content.
What Adobe missed
The assumption that AI would “elevate creativity” was only true when paired with human curation. In practice, we’ve seen brands struggle when they underestimate the role of editorial judgement, creative expertise, nuance, and brand guardianship.
Prompts and models alone don’t a brand make. GenAI tools can produce passable outputs, but great content still requires human creativity. That’s particularly true when refining your brand’s messaging, tone, and emotional resonance. Without that layer, you risk shipping content that’s generic, off-brand, or even counterproductive.
What this means for you
Don’t ship AI-generated content that isn’t refined with a human in the loop. The best GenAI content creation workflows are those build around hybrid frameworks that combine AI generation with expert editing, brand QA, and contextual awareness.
We’ve learned that the best results come when AI handles the heavy lifting and the work humans find boring, while leaving the polish, precision, and strategy to the human experts.
Reality check #3: efficiency and cost savings
“82% of creatives are currently using, and plan to continue using, generative AI with 74% believing it is helping them to work more efficiently.”
What Adobe got right
Adobe’s forecast that AI would drive cost-efficiency has largely played out—but only for the companies that knew how to implement it well. Organizations like Mondelez and Procter & Gamble, for example, are now seeing meaningful ROI from AI-assisted content workflows.
From photorealistic images to copy variants for global campaigns, these brands have proven that generative tools can reduce production costs, shorten production cycles, and enable content personalization on a global scale.
And these benefits, while easiest to observe in Fortune 500 companies, aren’t limited to massive enterprises. Mid-sized enterprise and small businesses have also reported improvements in throughput, task automation, and content localization without inflating headcount
Across industries, AI has reduced the need for redundant work—resizing, translating, reformatting, etc.—freeing up human talent to focus on strategy and storytelling.
What Adobe missed
Cost savings aren’t automatic and simply adopting GenAI doesn’t necessitate an increase in efficiency. After all, any tool used poorly can have poor results. Without clear workflows, asset libraries, quality controls, and—most importantly—human oversight, generative tools can actually increase downstream costs. Those increases tend to take the form of increased rework, off-brand outputs, or bloated review cycles.
In some cases, we’ve seen companies introduce generative tools expecting them to function as a silver bullet, only to end up paying their weight in gold for faster mediocrity. Adobe’s report focused on potential, but real-world ROI depends on practice. Only the organizations with the right infrastructure, training, and creative discipline can achieve their fullest potential.
What this means for you
Unlocking cost savings and efficiency gains comes from using GenAI not to cut corners but to re-engineer your creative processes. That means:
Automating the repetitive parts of production (like content variation, product descriptions, and file reformatting)
Embedding AI at the right stages of the creative workflow focusing on where it should go, instead of just where it could go
Using smart QA layers to minimize rework and support publication readiness
The result is leaner, smarter content operations where the average piece of output costs less, performs better, and takes less time to produce.
Reality check #4: team structure and talent strategy
“The increasing rate of work in the modern workplace requires employees to wear many hats.”
What Adobe got right
The fear that AI would replace creatives has proven largely unfounded. In fact, most enterprise organizations are increasing their investments in human talent alongside GenAI, not decreasing. Adobe correctly anticipated that roles would shift, not vanish.
Of course, creative roles don’t look exactly the same as they did five or ten years ago. Creative professionals have evolved into prompt engineers, content strategists, and AI content curators as well as content creators and editors in their own right. AI tools now assist with ideation, design drafts, and writing, but final judgement still rests in the hands of human experts.
Teams are being reshaped, not downsized.
What Adobe missed
The adoption of GenAI and the restructuring of teams has been far from frictionless. Many organizations introduced generative tools without fully understanding either the tools themselves or the creative processes they sought to augment. The result was creatives feeling burned out, confused, and disrespected by leadership as their workflows evolved independent of their job descriptions.
Adobe also under-emphasized the outsourcing shift. As roles evolve, many enterprise teams are finding value in turning to external partners—not to offload creativity, but to augment capacity with AI-fluent talent. This is especially true for mid-sized businesses and enterprises that need to scale content quickly without adding full-time headcount.
What this means for you
Creative teams aren’t getting smaller. They’re getting smarter, leaner, and more specialized. But they can’t do it alone. Whether you’re looking to support an in-house team or to collaborate with an enterprise-wide marketing operation, it’s crucial to build GenAI-enabled content creation systems that work without burning people out. That’s where the modern AI-driven creative agency comes in.
AI-driven creatives act as force multipliers, plugging into existing teams to help them meet demand, move faster, and work more strategically. We know how to adapt quickly to our clients’ tools, channels, and brand voice, and we bring AI-enabled workflows and cross-functional expertise that fills critical gaps.
The main takeaway is that GenAI is no longer a differentiator—it’s a requirement
The message from our research tracking Adobe’s GenAI-related predictions is clear: GenAI is here to stay and every creative should take time to master it. But it’s also important to know that GenAI only creates value when paired with the right strategy, talent, and execution model.
If you’re a marketing or sales leader at a mid-sized company or enterprise, you’ve likely felt the pressure already. Campaign cycles are shrinking, personalization demands are multiplying, and content expectations have outpaced internal bandwidth.
Adobe’s AI predictions were pretty well spot on (for the most part), but don’t tell the human side of the story. Yes, GenAI can increase output and efficiency. Yes, it can help your team do more with less. But only if your workflows, systems, and partners are equipped to turn raw output into refined, on-brand, high-performing creative assets.
That’s the reality we’re seeing in 2025. Companies that treat AI as a set-it-and-forget-it tool are struggling to maintain consistency and quality. Meanwhile, those that approach it with intentionality and understanding, supported by hybrid teams and experienced creative partners, are scaling both volume and performance.
The question isn’t whether your business should be using AI to generate content. It’s whether you’re doing it right.
Amato Consulting can help maximize the value of your creative content
At Amato Consulting, we’re working with enterprise teams to close the gap between GenAI’s promise and its real-world applications. We’re not a content factory or arbitrage firm churning out low-cost AI-generated content. We’re a strategic creative partner with experience helping SMBs and enterprises alike:
Scale content output without sacrificing brand standards
Accelerate production timelines with AI-assisted workflows
Ensure quality control through expert editing and oversight
Reduce internal strain by extending teams’ capabilities
We understand the realities of enterprise creative work—tight timelines, complex approval chains, global brand consistency—and we’ve built our process to solve those challenges with precision. Our team combines seasoned creatives with AI fluency to deliver the speed and efficiency product teams expect, alongside the polish and performance marketers demand.
If Adobe’s predictions outlined the ideal future of creative work, we’re already helping clients live it. Not just with better content delivered faster, but with more of it and with greater impact.