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- Spark Intelligence—the AI news creatives need to know #011
Spark Intelligence—the AI news creatives need to know #011
The AI news you need to know to grow your business and your career
Emma Wharton Love
January 13, 2025 • Approx Read Time: 12 minutes
Greetings earthlings,
As 2025 begins, we’re looking at the AI trends and tools that could reshape creative businesses this year. Whether you’re refining your AI strategy or exploring new possibilities, we’re here with practical insights and updates for creative and marketing.
This week’s highlights:
AI Agents: Why 2025 is hyped as the breakthrough year.
AI watermarking: Solving IP challenges in creative work.
Have you tried AI in your bid writing process yet?
NVIDIA’s AI supercomputer: what it could mean for the future of AI.
Easy ways to AI-up your game over the next month.
1. AI Agents: Why 2025 is hyped as the ‘agentic’ year, and why you don’t need to worry about it.
Agentic AI is often called the next frontier—systems that can independently observe, decide, and act on goals without constant human input. Leading AI companies like Google and Microsoft are touting 2025 as a pivotal year.
Where are the flying cars?
But what Microsoft and Google aren’t telling you, is they’ve secretly re-defined what they mean by agents. What’s they are calling “agentic” today is really just an AI enabled workflow — chained tools that automate repetitive tasks rather than true independent agents. You have to set them up, give them data and parameters, and tightly define every step of what they do. So while this is exciting for some tasks, true autonomy is likely years away.
Our takeaway
For most agencies and marketing teams you’ll get more value from focusing on augmenting your existing workflows with AI now, but keep your eyes peeled while the autonomous future unfolds.
An oldie but a goodie - do you use TextFX?
Google’s TextFX
Google’s TextFX is delightfully simple and offers a suite of tools designed to support ideation, explore a theme and get un-stuck. Brilliant for everyone from strategists to marketers to poets to rappers.
Built in collaboration with rapper and lyricist Lupe Fiasco, TextFX taps into Google’s language models to create nine simple one-button tools to encourage exploration.
Let’s breakdown the tools:
Simile: Stuck on a comparison? Grab some ideas here.
Explode: Turn words into a playground of sound-alike phrases for clever wordplay.
Unexpect: Add an element of surprise, shaking up your narrative.
Chain: Generate semantically connected ideas.
Alliteration: Find topic-relevant, letter-specific words.
Acronym: Craft catchy acronyms, ideal for branding or mnemonics.
Fuse: Combine two ideas into one, creating intersecting concepts.
Scene: Flesh out your scenes with vibrant details.
Unfold: See how a word integrates into various contexts and phrases.
Explore it yourself at textfx.withgoogle.com.
2. AI Watermarking: Is it solving IP challenges in creative work?
The rapid rise of AI-generated content has introduced challenges around intellectual property and authenticity. Google’s SynthID and Meta’s watermarking tool are leading solutions to ensure traceability.
How they work:
Google SynthID: Embeds imperceptible signals into text, images, videos, and audio to identify AI-generated content, even after it’s been edited.
Meta Video Seal: Similar in function but focuses only on generative video for now, but integrates seamlessly with their advertising ecosystem.
How they differ:
SynthID can work with all media including text, making it a more comprehensive solution.
Meta’s tool is tied to its platform, benefiting advertisers directly but lacking SynthID’s broader application.
Practical uses:
Prove authorship in AI-generated campaigns, reassuring clients about originality.
Navigate copyright concerns by ensuring proper attribution.
Use transparency as a selling point—clients trust agencies that prioritise ethical AI practices.
We talked about this in December’s What’s New In AI podcast - check out our chat at 22:20.
3. Tip of the Week: Destress your bid writing
As a micro but ambitious creative AI consultancy, we’ve relied on grants to fund our growth and push forward our innovative projects. Writing grant applications, however, can feel like a mountain to climb—especially fitting it around our work with clients, generally running the business and there being just two of us (hopefully soon to be more!).
To solve this, we built a custom GPT to act as our grant-writing collaborator. Notice we said collaborator, not just assistant. While the GPT generates first drafts, the real magic happens in the back-and-forth. We use it to brainstorm ideas, refine responses, and elevate our messaging. This approach doesn’t just save time—it changes the process into an iterative, creative partnership with an extra brain that also serves as our knowledge management system, housing all our past work and future strategies.
RFP to OMG
Imagine applying the same principle to your bids. Every RFP is a chance to stand out, but crafting winning pitches can strain even the best teams. A custom GPT can speed up and enhance this process, giving you the space to focus on creativity and strategy.
Here’s how it works:
Upload Your Key Resources: Include past pitches, client case studies, brand guidelines, and RFP templates.
Set Clear Parameters: Train the GPT to understand your preferred tone of voice, structure, and common client concerns.
Collaborate Actively: Use the GPT’s drafts as a starting point, iterating and brainstorming together to refine the final product.
Tailor Each Submission: With your GPT handling repetitive sections, you can focus on personalisation and strategy for each pitch.
How to set up a Custom GPT
You can create a custom GPT with tools like ChatGPT, Claude Projects, Gemini Gems (if you are Google native), or CoPilot Studio—depending on your preferred large language model (LLM).
For ChatGPT:
Choose the right plan and set up a your GPT::
You’ll need to be on the Teams plan of ChatGPT to access CustomGPTs - but we recommend you should be on this anyway to keep your data safe!
Navigate to the Custom GPTs section in ChatGPT and start a new project - go to ‘Explore GPTs’ then click top right ‘+ Create’ button.
Upload key files for the GPT’s knowledge base, such as past pitches, case studies, style guides, and RFP requirements.
Define your Instructions:
Start with your objective: Clearly outline the goal of the GPT. For example: “Generate professional, client-ready bid drafts tailored to specific RFP requirements.”
Craft Task-specific prompts:
Provide context: “You are helping us draft a bid for a digital marketing project focused on sustainability.”
Define tone and style: “Write in a professional yet approachable tone, emphasising measurable results.”
Highlight priorities: “Use our case studies to back up claims and include metrics where relevant.”
Assign roles to documents:
Case Studies: “Extract key outcomes and metrics.”
Brand Guidelines: “Ensure tone consistency.”
RFP Templates: “Follow the structure provided.”
Include do’s and don’ts:
Do: “Highlight unique approaches and measurable results.”
Don’t: “Avoid overly technical jargon unless required.”
We also like to tell it to avoid phrases like ‘in this ever-evolving world’ and ‘game-changer’!
Set iteration rules:
“If the output exceeds 300 words, summarise it into a single paragraph.”
“Rewrite if the tone is too formal—keep it approachable but professional.” Of course you can also upload your own tone of voice guidelines, or instruct it to use the same voice as past bids you have given it to draw on.
Test and refine: Run test scenarios using example prompts to ensure your GPT is aligned with your needs. Adjust instructions as needed - it’s a really iterative process to build the most helpful GPTs. They are definitely not one and done! But overall save huge time and stress.
Alternative Tools
Claude Projects: Ideal for nuanced tone-of-voice applications, making it perfect for agencies handling multiple clients.
Gemini Gems: If you are Google native, this tool excels in multimodal capabilities like combining text and images.
CoPilot Studio: Best for teams using Microsoft workflows, integrating seamlessly with Office tools.
We help our clients set up custom GPTs - give us a shout if you need a hand.
Have you tried GPTs for bid writing? |
4. NVIDIA’s $3K AI supercomputer: What’s it all about?
You might not know NVIDIA by name, but their technology powers everything from gaming consoles to AI tools like ChatGPT. They’re a leader in creating the hardware behind the magic—chips and systems that make AI work. But now they are starting to move out from back-of house to consumer facing.
This week, NVIDIA unveiled Project DIGITS, a $3,000 AI supercomputer small enough to fit on your desk. It’s designed to give businesses access to cutting-edge AI power without relying entirely on cloud-based services.
Why should you care?
Let’s get real: most of you aren’t building autonomous robots or training massive AI models. But DIGITS represents a shift that is worth taking note of for the future. It shows how AI tools are becoming more accessible, and in time, devices like this might change how creative teams work by:
Speeding Up AI Workflows: While tools like ChatGPT rely on the cloud, local AI power could cut down waiting times for processes like video editing, image generation, or data-heavy analysis.
Data Privacy and Security: When sensitive client data isn’t sent to the cloud, the risks of breaches or misuse are significantly reduced. This is especially valuable for agencies or marketing teams handling confidential campaigns, regulated industries, or high-profile clients where data security is a priority.
How does this compare to my ChatGPT subscription?
Right now, most agencies will get far more immediate value from tools like ChatGPT or Claude—tools that deliver AI power through affordable, user-friendly subscriptions. DIGITS isn’t likely to replace those, but it points toward a future where smaller teams could use their own local AI systems to handle more advanced tasks independently.
The takeaway
DIGITS isn’t something most people need today, but it’s a VERY interesting glimpse of what’s coming.
5. Easy ways to AI-up your game over the next month
For free
Free webinar with Matthew Maxwell, creative director and artist on his creative process with using AI. Join is an be truly inspired!
No reason not to!
Our Bristol and London workshops cover the same core learning objectives but you have more time to dig deeper, ask more questions and network at our London event.
Or don’t you want to leave the house?
We've just launched our first online course. It will be paced over 3 weeks with a 1.5 hour commitment each week, starting 20 February.
This has been a long one. Here’s to experimenting.
Until next time,
—Emma & Jules
Co-founders, Spark AI
P.S. Have you seen our AI Accelerator program for agencies? Learn how to fast-track AI integration in just 8 weeks. Learn more.
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