For 4 weeks earlier than Christmas, New York’s subway system turned an unlikely laboratory for testing whether or not there is a center floor between AI enthusiasm and AI rejection. It is a query that issues to each inventive navigating this second: Is there a helpful third method?
The “Think about If” marketing campaign, created by advert company SuperHeroes for OUTFRONT Media and Google DeepMind, turned 4,000 digital screens throughout the MTA community right into a transferring gallery. The premise was simple. Subway riders may scan a QR code and submit an “Think about If…” immediate—”Think about if Brooklyn Bridge Park had off-leash hours for dinosaurs” was one early instance—and obtain an AI-generated visualisation.
Native artists would then remodel chosen submissions into polished video artworks, displayed throughout all 5 boroughs.
The way it truly labored
SuperHeroes recruited 5 artists, one representing every New York borough: Lauren Camara, Ariana Cimino, Molly Goldfarb, Subway Doodle and Jeff Wave. These weren’t AI specialists or tech evangelists. They had been working artists with established types and native followings, chosen exactly as a result of they represented distinct inventive voices.
Their position went past easy immediate engineering. They reviewed submissions from their respective boroughs, chosen concepts that resonated, and used Gemini, Veo, Movement and Nano Banana to remodel these prompts into completed artworks. The marketing campaign culminated with a showcase on OUTFRONT’s Two Instances Sq. digital spectacular, the premium slot on Instances Sq.’s north finish.
OUTFRONT’s vp and head of digital inventive, Chad Shackelford, positioned the mission as creating “a citywide expertise that celebrates creativeness as a shared act.” Google DeepMind’s inventive lead Matthieu Lorrain described it as “actually participative artwork codecs” demonstrating “human-AI partnership”.
However essentially the most revealing remark got here from Subway Doodle: “As an artist, I used to be initially hesitant to make use of AI,” he stated. “However over time, I accepted that AI is right here to remain, and I began exploring it. So after I received approached by SuperHeroes for this mission, I used to be curious to discover the way to use Google’s generative AI as a software for my artwork.”
Why this issues
To my thoughts, that sentence—hesitant, accepting, exploring—issues greater than any of the marketing campaign’s polished outputs or press launch rhetoric. As a result of it is the inventive business’s journey in miniature, stripped of the same old posturing.
Subway Doodle’s path from scepticism to curiosity is not a conversion narrative. It is a skilled evaluation. The software exists. The temporary requires it. The outcomes are attention-grabbing sufficient to analyze additional. No manifestos. No pretending this is not difficult.
And that is exactly what makes this marketing campaign price inspecting as a possible third method. This wasn’t a bottom-up exploration the place artists selected to experiment with AI on their very own phrases. It was a top-down fee the place the instruments had been already specified within the temporary.
The artists weren’t debating whether or not to make use of AI; they had been determining the way to use it properly, on their very own phrases, with their inventive judgment intact.
What a cynic may say
In fact, there’s an apparent critique right here. A cynic may name it participation theatre: scan a QR code, get an prompt visualisation, really feel concerned whereas the actual inventive work occurs elsewhere. And this was, in the end, a advertising and marketing train for Google DeepMind’s Veo and Gemini fashions, full with that barely exhausting press launch language about “collective acts of cultural co-creation”.
But to me, even that company gloss feels instructive. As a result of let’s get actual: that is seemingly how AI instruments will truly enter most inventive workflows. Not via cautious moral deliberation or bottom-up adoption by sceptical freelancers. However via briefs the place the instruments are already specified, the price range is already allotted, and the query shifts from “ought to we?” to “how will we do that properly?”
Key takeaways
In case you’re a inventive director studying this whereas anxiously monitoring AI developments, the “Think about If” marketing campaign gives a number of sensible takeaways that matter greater than the hype.
First, the human contribution shifted, however did not disappear. The artists weren’t producing artwork from nothing: they had been choosing submissions, decoding group visions, making use of editorial judgment about what would resonate with their borough’s viewers. These curatorial and interpretive expertise turned extra worthwhile, not much less, as execution instruments turned quicker.
Second, AI instruments labored greatest when fixing particular inventive issues fairly than changing whole inventive processes. The artists used Veo to visualise group concepts, with all of the judgment and craft that requires. The software accelerated manufacturing however did not take away the necessity for inventive decision-making.
Third, and maybe most significantly: hesitation is cheap, however avoidance is turning into costly. The 5 artists who stated sure to this mission spent 4 weeks studying instruments that may seem in dozens of future briefs. They constructed expertise, developed workflows, and found sensible limitations and prospects. The artists who declined are, arguably, 4 weeks behind.
Conclusion
So is that this a helpful third method? This is my perception: inventive professionals are going to should get comfy with instruments they do not totally belief, made by firms they do not totally like, producing work they cannot totally declare as theirs. That is not inspiring. It isn’t a rallying cry. It is simply the state of play in 2026.
Is it a compromise? Positively. However for working creatives dealing with briefs that already specify AI instruments, pragmatic scepticism beats principled avoidance, at the very least with regards to paying your hire. In different phrases, the third method is not good, however it is perhaps the one one obtainable proper now.
