Events Creative Operations Australia 2026 Getting Real About What AI Can and Can’t Do for Creative Operations

Learning from Losing with AI

Context

AI is moving quickly from experimentation to expectation inside creative and marketing teams. But behind the headlines, many of the most useful lessons are coming not from flawless success stories, but from the pilots that stalled, the tools that under-delivered, the workflows that proved harder to automate than expected, and the moments where human judgement remained essential.

This Panel 

Takes a practical and honest look at what Creative Operations teams are learning from real AI adoption: 

  • Where AI is genuinely improving speed, scale, consistency and production efficiency
  • Where it still creates risk, rework or false confidence
  • How leaders can make better decisions about which use cases to pursue, pause or stop

The Focus

  • Not hype or theoretical futures
  • Rather what happens when AI meets the realities of creative quality, brand governance, approvals, rights, team capability, change fatigue and operational accountability
  • Frank lessons from practitioners who have tested AI in real creative, marketing and production environments. Including what failed, what surprised them, what they would do differently, and how those lessons are shaping more mature approaches to AI-enabled Creative Operations

Covering

  • Where AI is delivering real value in Creative Operations today, and where expectations are ahead of capability
  • Common reasons AI pilots fail, stall or fail to scale
  • How to choose the right use cases across briefing, ideation, versioning, localisation, QA, workflow automation and production
  • The operational, legal, brand and cultural guardrails needed before scaling AI
  • How Creative Operations leaders can balance efficiency gains with creative quality and meaningful human work
  • What “good” looks like when moving from experimentation to governed adoption

Delivering

  • A clearer view of what AI can and cannot currently do for Creative Operations
  • Practical lessons from real-world AI experiments, including failures and false starts
  • A sharper framework for selecting, governing and scaling AI use cases
  • Confidence to have more honest internal conversations about AI investment, risk, capability and change
Display Date and Time
10 November, 14:00 AEDT
Track
1
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Speaker Groups
Moderator
Individual Course Speaker
Events Event Speaker Aaron Michie
Panellists
Individual Course Speaker
Events Event Speaker Julie Poulter
Events Event Speaker Ash Ryan
Events Event Speaker Via Tendon
Programmatic Date Range
-
Session Title
Getting Real About What AI Can and Can’t Do for Creative Operations