The Fine Print: AI, Marketing & Brand Risk

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. 

[00:00:03] Tessa Burg: I’m your host, Tessa Burg. And today, I’m joined by Candice Kersh. She’s a partner at Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz in the advertising and marketing group. She has received countless accolades and awards over the years in the field of advertising and law. And today, we are going to jump into that intersection specifically, really starting to better understand where AI, marketing, intellectual property, procurement, agency operations, and all the things that you’re stressed about as a marketing leader today, reading contracts, trying to better understand what you need to worry about when it comes to generative AI, data, and who owns what. 

[00:00:43] Tessa Burg: So thank you so much, Candice, for joining us. I’m very excited about this conversation.  

[00:00:49] Candice Kersh: Thank you. I’m excited as well. I really enjoy talking about all of this, so this is gonna be great.  

[00:00:56] Tessa Burg: Now, I know you have some speaking engagements coming up, but before we start, tell us a little bit about your background and what is coming up next for you. 

[00:01:08] Candice Kersh: Thank you. Yeah. So I am, as you said, in the advertising group of Frankfurt Kurnit. I have been an advertising lawyer for many years, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most amazing, innovative, and creative agencies over the years, as well as some of the country’s top advertisers. And through it all, it, it– working with creative people, it just keeps you constantly on your toes and applying all different areas of law. 

[00:01:34] Candice Kersh: It’s never boring. It’s really interesting. And so yes, I do speak at various places around the country on– currently a lot on, on AI. I have a couple of speaking engagements coming up, as you said. And I’m, uh, just looking forward to this conversation.  

[00:01:50] Tessa Burg: So, w- one of the questions we get a lot is, are people keeping up with the pace of AI, and what do they really need to focus on? 

[00:02:01] Tessa Burg: So I think it’s no secret that AI is moving at breakneck speed, that policy and regulation is not keeping up. What should people be worried about right now, and what should they really be focused on when it comes to their own use of AI in marketing and advertising?  

[00:02:21] Candice Kersh: That’s interesting. I mean, I think people right now, as you said, everybody wants to jump on the AI bandwagon, and I do think people think it’ll make things quicker, faster, efficient. 

[00:02:31] Candice Kersh: However, to some extent that is true, but you do have to take a little bit of a step back because there are a lot of legal issues and pitfalls and things that can come up, um, that really can cause a lot of issues for you as you’re embarking on your advertising efforts. And I think it’s really important for people to understand the issues, and therefore to think about it and to put in place protections to protect the agency or the brand from potential liability as a result of this, you know, jump first and think about it later. 

[00:03:08] Tessa Burg: And what are some of the things that you see that are pretty common in protecting agencies from liability?  

[00:03:14] Candice Kersh: Well, the first thing is you have to think about how you’re using AI. Um, so AI can be used in concepting, ideation. AI can be used in research. AI can be used in, uh, creative and execution. And so y- and each one has its own types of issues attendant to it. 

[00:03:33] Candice Kersh: So for example, if you’re going to use AI for, um, claim development, you’ve gotta be worried about, with AI, just the, also the input and the output. So the input, again, depending on the type of AI, w- taking even a further step back, is, you know, are you using enterprise licenses? What, where… You know, does your firm have a policy? 

[00:03:55] Candice Kersh: Should you be using closed enterprise licenses? Is it worth the cost? Because again, trying to save money with publicly available licenses, your input can be used for training purposes. There’s confidentiality concerns, which your people should be aware of. Um, and then you have to be worried about the output and hallucinations. 

[00:04:16] Candice Kersh: There’s cases out there where, you know, particularly in advertising, the fact that your claims, uh, may have been developed by IP are not going to give you the protection against false advertising claims. So you do need to consider, even in claim development and, and how your use of AI, you know, the fact that AI says it, and I think most people know that at this point, doesn’t necessarily make it true, and you as a company are still responsible for the, for the claims that come out  

[00:04:46] Tessa Burg: That you said, you mentioned that companies are trying to save money by using some of the free models, or they might tell people, “Hey, we really need you to use the licenses we have at ChatGPT,” but perhaps someone really likes Perplexity or Claude or a different model, and they’re… 

[00:05:06] Tessa Burg: That a lot of companies don’t realize that opens them up to risk.  

[00:05:09] Candice Kersh: Absolutely. And, and, you know, if you’re not… The benefit of an enterprise license is there are going to be, depending on what you’re using and which AI you’re using, there may be prohibitions on use commercially. There certainly, there’s the possibility of using your information for training. 

[00:05:26] Candice Kersh: Uh, you know, and, and if you’re not really looking at that, I mean, it’s one thing if you want to create an illustration in your, um, y- your PowerPoint presentation of, you know, boy with cat. Yes, it doesn’t really matter if you use a publicly available sourced AI. Um, but as a company, I think you need to put policies and procedures in place, and even if, yes, of course you’re not going to hinder somebody creatively, but somebody should then be reviewing those terms and conditions and making sure that they are appropriate for the use. 

[00:06:01] Candice Kersh: Because, again, what each of your individual employees could be doing could be imposing liability on the company. And as a leader of a company, you should be aware of that, and you should be controlling for that. And so again, I come down to education and policies, whatever they may be, are such a great thing for a company to have. 

[00:06:20] Candice Kersh: I mean, it really is so important because I don’t think people understand the potential, um, damages or, or liability that they could be exposing the company to. And so by training, like this kind of training or showing up, like when I do these sessions, really explaining to people what the pitfalls are and how you can easily avoid them is just, I think, gives the company so much more protection  

[00:06:46] Tessa Burg: Yeah, and I think a lot of companies or people who are listening to this podcast right now may be thinking, “I’ve tried to tell the team that there’s liability,” and I know there’s still, you know, dark AI or dark AI use happening, but external voices carry a lot more weight. 

[00:07:03] Tessa Burg: And I would just encourage, like, marketing leaders, like sometimes you need that external speaker to come in with really sound use cases and examples from where they’ve seen it at other businesses. ‘Cause just like the internet, I think that there’s still this, when the internet first came out, when people weren’t highly aware of the consequences of sharing their own personal information, and now that’s pretty well understood that if I am entering something into a form, I better make sure that that form is going to a company and that payment security is incredibly important. 

[00:07:36] Tessa Burg: But a lot of people had to go through a lot of pain to learn that. And AI accelerates the risk, and so the more you can have external voices and people really understanding the risk they’re putting the company at and what, where the liability sits when they use unlicensed or un- the non-enterprise license software, the better. 

[00:07:59] Candice Kersh: Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting because, I mean, I grew up with creative agencies, and I really have had the pleasure of working very, very closely with them. And so I, I, a lot of lawyers have, or at least reputationally can just say, “No, this is what you can’t do.” The goal here is not to tell everybody what they can’t do and that if they use AI, you know, the, the entire world’s gonna fall apart. 

[00:08:19] Candice Kersh: The goal is to try to find ways to do what they want to do in a manner that protects the company. And, and th- that makes the difference, right? So if you’re bringing in training just to say, “You can’t do anything, you know, go back to drawing stick figures and, you know, you’re not gonna use AI for it,” th- that’s an unrealistic view. 

[00:08:38] Candice Kersh: And, and I think as you’re looking, we’re gonna talk later, and I don’t want to jump ahead, but just a little bit for a moment, is contracts, when the contracts say you can’t use AI or there’s no use, these are unrealistic. I mean, everything has AI at this point. Yeah. It’s a little exaggeration, but embedded in it. 

[00:08:54] Candice Kersh: So it’s really a question of- Understanding the AI and understanding what your corporate risk tolerance is, and then putting in place programs that allow people to do what they want to do, but do it in a way that doesn’t expose the company to liability that it’s not even aware of.  

[00:09:14] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that brings us to, like, our next set of questions. 

[00:09:18] Tessa Burg: So as an enterprise or a business, I’ve decided to license an AI-enabled service or a platform or app or piece of technology, and now I’m looking at the vendor agreement. It gets tricky again. And where do you see companies unknowingly taking risk when they do license and deploy these AI tools in the business? 

[00:09:40] Candice Kersh: So, so the first thing, I mean, it, it’s kind of walking through, you know, when you’re using AI, what type of AI and what’s, what’s the purpose of the AI? Because as we were talking about before, you know, I think one of the big issues that people are starting to become aware of is, is the ownership, right? You cannot… 

[00:09:57] Candice Kersh: Even if as between you and the platform, the platform is not going to own your material from a copyright perspective. And a copyright gives somebody the exclusive right to use creative material that’s fixed in a tangible form, so, right? So you have certain protections. You can prevent others from using your creative if you own the copyright. 

[00:10:19] Candice Kersh: If you don’t own the copyright, if something is free to be used, anybody can use it. The problem with AI, and the Copyright Office has made clear, at least right now, is copyright in the, in the US requires human authorship. And because AI, the authorship and the creative decisions are determined algorithmically, you don’t have… 

[00:10:41] Candice Kersh: You can’t get copyright protection in something that is wholly created by AI. So from a company perspective, you know, i- it’s like, “Oh, I, I, I have to own everything.” Well, the question is, as you’re looking at it and as you’re thinking about this issue, is does it matter… Again, this is that whole balancing. 

[00:10:58] Candice Kersh: Does it matter in the… for what you’re doing, right? In other words, like, if I’m just doing some quick-hit social media stuff, does it matter if I don’t own it? If I’m just taking my product and putting it in 100 different scenes, does it matter if I don’t own it? If I’m just doing a scene extension of a brick wall, does it matter if I don’t own it? 

[00:11:17] Candice Kersh: And then as you delve deeper, and this is again the importance of training, as you delve deeper, there are things that you can own, and then it also may make the ownership of the AI component less important. For example, if there’s a case in which somebody created a comic book and they used Midjourney to, I believe, to create the illustrations. 

[00:11:38] Candice Kersh: Well, in, in that situation, the person… You can own the copyright in the text. You can own the copyright in the arrangement. And so does it matter as much that you don’t own the copyright in the individual drawings? If you are basing your AI, uh, output on something that you already own the copyright in and it’s just a derivation of that, there may be elements of that derivation that you don’t own, but you’re gonna own the copyright and the underlying input, the photograph, whatever. 

[00:12:11] Candice Kersh: So does it matter again? So that’s why it, it’s, it’s such a nuanced situation because if it doesn’t matter, then this whole notion of not having ownership, you know, again, is not a, a, a barri- a barrier to what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you’re creating a spot and you have to own it and it’s really important, you want to prevent others from using it and blah, blah, blah, then maybe it is. 

[00:12:33] Candice Kersh: So understanding leads to intelligent choices  

[00:12:39] Tessa Burg: I think that’s a really important call-out, and one that truly I didn’t fully understand, so I’m glad we’re talking about it. But that’s a important conversation to have with your clients.  

[00:12:49] Candice Kersh: Yeah, of course.  

[00:12:50] Tessa Burg: I- there are clients who, you know, have really high-value IP and, you know, characters, toys that they’ve developed that they’re monetizing in many different ways, in merchandising and commercial and other, and they do have in their contracts, “You can definitely never use AI because we won’t own it,” and that’s number one thing cited. 

[00:13:13] Tessa Burg: Even this conversation really… And I think that the thought of not owning something is just scary. But when you break it down, it’s like we can prioritize what’s really important to own, and the core of our business, our characters, our, our core IP,  

[00:13:29] Candice Kersh: yes,  

[00:13:29] Tessa Burg: that’s still important to own and we’ll own that. 

[00:13:32] Tessa Burg: But if, would I still own the outputs if all I was doing was using it to translate it into, like, different languages?  

[00:13:39] Candice Kersh: Well, you would own the output. You would own the copyright and the text itself that you wrote. So does it mat- I mean, you’re, you’re talking about, again, does it matter that you would own the underlying so somebody couldn’t just translate it into another language and, and, and, you know, be able to still use it by virtue of the fact that it’s still based premise, it’s derivative of your work. 

[00:14:01] Candice Kersh: So again, if it’s a slavish copy of something on which you own the copyright, I mean, the, the difference is not going to be, the, the, what… There’s nothing really to own at that point or not own because the, the underlying copyright in the work is yours So, um, it, it, and, and it’s interesting. And then of course the other thing is from an infringement point of view, what people need to understand also is that you can ha- you can create the infringement through your input, and this is this whole notion of policies of recording prompts and making sure that your people are not inputting something that says, “I want you to create, um, a photograph,” you know, and put in somebody else’s photograph that you don’t own, and then you get something derivative. 

[00:14:50] Candice Kersh: Or, uh, the, I think one of the newspapers did, you know, the, the, um, I don’t know that you could still do it, but did a, um, experiment where they were s- saying things like, “Put in, um, you know, a sponge under the sea with pants,” and they got SpongeBob SquarePants. So I mean, if you were to, you know, you can try to force the AI and that, that, you know, the fact that it’s created by AI doesn’t mean you can’t infringe on a third party. 

[00:15:16] Candice Kersh: Right now, most of the lawsuits that we’re dealing with are based on the, uh, creation of the AI itself. There’s a lot of different lawsuits, whether it’s on infringing on the copyright in something or voices, et cetera. But, um, you can create that infringement by, by how you input it. And so even though currently with… 

[00:15:39] Candice Kersh: I, I, I am not, I’m, just trying to think. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a lawsuit that’s based on the output alone that somebody inadvertently, and perhaps it’s statistically unlikely, it is possible, and certainly if you are forcing that infringement, it becomes a, a, a much more likely scenario. 

[00:15:54] Candice Kersh: So again, teaching your people not to use third-party, uh, input to, that they don’t have rights to to create the AI, um, and, and to keep prompts and understand what their, what their input prompts are so that they can ever defend if you do get a claim is really important.  

[00:16:13] Tessa Burg: This has been very enlightening already, and we didn’t even get to the third area of what I think sort of blocks brands and creative folks from using AI and using it properly, which is data. 

[00:16:26] Tessa Burg: You know, a lot of people are concerned about are they exposing their data? What’s, what are the measures in safety and security pro- to protect owned data from-  

[00:16:36] Candice Kersh: Mm-hmm  

[00:16:37] Tessa Burg: … going out into the public or even their own inventions. What are some of the ways that people are managing that liability?  

[00:16:46] Candice Kersh: Well, I thi- I think using the closed systems and also having policies in place, um, is, is a way certainly to manage. 

[00:16:53] Candice Kersh: And also using, only using, um, you know, AI, uh, platforms that have, you know, check the data security require- uh, data security, uh, of those platforms. Um, so where it’s a little bit off from data, but where, you know, I’m seeing a lot and whereas a lot of the laws are, and I think it’s important for your listeners to, to understand, is the issue which everybody’s focused on now is digital replicas and synthetic performers, which I think is In the creative area, probably one of the more exciting and also h- has the most pitfalls, um, in terms of… 

[00:17:30] Candice Kersh: ‘Cause everybody wants to take somebody and use their voice and, or their, you know, style and create. It’s much cheaper as opposed to going into studio with a performer, it’s much cheaper to, to, you know, give somebody, record them, and then create AI versions of them. And so you’re seeing a lot of laws now, um, between SAG-AFTRA and the states that are… 

[00:17:54] Candice Kersh: That’s really a hot area right now, where all the laws are coming in to really regulate how people are doing that. And I don’t know if we have time to go into it all, but it’s, it’s certainly a- another area that, uh, I think is, is of tremendous interest to a lot of people in the creative field.  

[00:18:10] Tessa Burg: Yeah. No, that one, it, it definitely comes up a lot. 

[00:18:15] Tessa Burg: But just to ask a broad question on it, if I am an actor, like a voice actor, and I… Is there an avenue where it’s legal for me to allow someone to use my voice so, like, I don’t have to go in and record, and I’ve given permission for you to use, like, the AI version of my voice to do work?  

[00:18:36] Candice Kersh: Yes. And so, so you look at that. 

[00:18:38] Candice Kersh: There’s, there’s… When you look at digital replicas, the laws are, um… And you’re seeing a lot. There’s a, there’s a couple laws that are currently out there, and there are more that are, that are, uh, currently, uh, i- in… They haven’t been passed yet, but they’re certainly, uh, they’re- they’re being contemplated. 

[00:18:55] Candice Kersh: But the big ones right now are New York and California, and what they require is if you’re taking away work from a talent, um, and you need to make sure either you are reasonably specific as to what you’re doing so it’s not just… You know, when we used to do, um, talent agreements, we used to say any and all media forever and ever, whatever, because you would just take it and they would do one record and you would… 

[00:19:22] Candice Kersh: Now because of the possibilities, you know, the laws really wanna make sure that you’re either specific or the person is represented by a lawyer, um, uh, or a union. But in… We now have a law in New York as well that deals with models that doesn’t really… The l- the fact that you have a lawyer or a union is not going to be enough to avoid this reasonable specificity. 

[00:19:45] Candice Kersh: The whole point is that you don’t want somebody 20 years from now to h- still hear their voice and to feel like they were, were taken advantage of, and so they want reasonable specificity. What that is, is the question that lawyers are debating because, you know, how much specificity is enough? And again, those laws are only in certain states currently. 

[00:20:06] Tessa Burg: Yeah, that is really interesting. And it’s w- uh, the m- more interesting part of actually what you said is that it’s only in certain states because it’s kind of hard if you have- Yes … people to run things, like, just locally, like, especially in the states that you’re talking about which have large populations. 

[00:20:24] Tessa Burg: Do you typically advise clients to follow, like, the most strict policy and rule to protect themselves?  

[00:20:31] Candice Kersh: It depends. I mean, you know, that’s, that’s obviously the simplest way because you don’t know what, what’s gonna happen down the road, and certainly, um, th- that is the simplest. But it depends on the situation, what you’re doing and, and how you’re, you’re doing it. 

[00:20:45] Candice Kersh: The problem in our country is that, um, we don’t have a federal right of publicity, so it’s, it’s, these are all state-specific, and the state laws differ. So you either, you know, do go to the most, you know, conservative and then i- i- less to worry about, or you, you know, make a much more surgical decision as to h- what you’re going to do based on, you know, where to, where you’re going to record, what your usage is, et cetera. 

[00:21:11] Candice Kersh: Because, um, you know, these things are, uh, really can be very fact-specific. And then you also have the issue of synthetic performers, which we thought, “Okay, fine, I’m just not gonna even bother with people. I’m just gonna create a s- you know, whole cloth performer,” you know, which is synthetic performer. But now we have laws which just went into effect in New York, for example, and there’s three other states, I believe, that are contemplating similar laws, or two other states contemplating similar laws, that require labeling. 

[00:21:41] Candice Kersh: Mm. So that if you use a synthetic performer, you have to let people know that this is not a real talent. Um, and then you have on top of it, you have the platform disclosure. So there’s the whole other issue of, which is another interesting area, is do I have to disclose? And I think a lot of people are facing that, and that becomes also a quagmire. 

[00:22:01] Candice Kersh: So, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot here. It’s certainly possible, but, and it’s a very interesting analysis through your campaign. But it, the point is it’s doable. It’s just a question of, you know, going through it, making your adjustments. And doing it upfront is frankly the best way because if you’re able to come into a campaign where you’re, you know, explored your creative… 

[00:22:22] Candice Kersh: I mean, I work with my clients. They have a deck. We talk about it, and then you can make modification, as opposed to finding out at the very end that you’re gonna have to do these things or you can’t do these things, so.  

[00:22:33] Tessa Burg: Yeah, and I feel like you were saying before- Where, where you really need to focus on protection and managing risk is based on how you’re using AI. 

[00:22:43] Tessa Burg: In the conversation of labeling whether or not this is a synthetic performer and going back and forth, I feel like you have to think about what would your audience think you know? Like, is your target audience gonna be totally freaked out that this is a synthetic performer? Then maybe not only do you have to label it, but don’t do it because- Well- 

[00:23:04] Tessa Burg: you could land very poorly …  

[00:23:06] Candice Kersh: a- and then on top of it you have, like, the other, you know, advertising issues, which is if it’s a demonstration, if I have a beauty product and I’m showing somebody a, a, an AI, uh, synthetic model putting on that beauty product and showing how well it, you know, shows your eyes, I mean, is that, you have to basically it’s, it’s now a false demonstration in- depending on the context. 

[00:23:29] Candice Kersh: It’s, um, if I have an endorsement, if I have fake, you know, bot saying, “This is the best product I’ve ever used,” and I use a lot of products, you know, you’re gonna have to let, you’re gonna, just for truth in advertising purposes, you’re gonna have to label it. So there are… It definitely makes my job interesting because, you know, as I said to you when I started this, the goal is how do I get the creatives to be able to do what they wanna do safely and within the company’s, you know, um, policies? 

[00:23:58] Candice Kersh: And, and, and again, versus no AI, I’m gonna close my eyes. It just doesn’t work that way. And then to your earlier point is when you use production companies or third parties, how do you push that obligation down so that they are not using AI in a way that makes you uncomfortable so you, you know, you don’t realize what they’re doing, but it, you know, it goes down the chain. 

[00:24:24] Candice Kersh: So all of it is just, again, it, it is counterintuitive when you’re thinking that AI is faster, quicker, easier, but it can be faster, quicker, easier as, but you can’t just go as fast as you would like. Like anything else, you have to give some thought to some of these other issues, in which case you can get a great campaign that m- you know, uh, maybe- Faster, easier, you know. 

[00:24:47] Candice Kersh: But if you end up falling into one of these pitfalls, you end up with a, uh, you know, a liability that you had never intended, which makes things much more expensive.  

[00:24:57] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I mean, I feel like it’s a lot of things. When you invest early in the overall strategy and then you put in the right guardrails, processes, and to your point, training and education, so now we understand the reason for the strategy, the policy, and the, uh, through that training, then you can move faster after that. 

[00:25:14] Tessa Burg: But there is no, like, on/off switch to now we’re using it, now we’re not.  

[00:25:19] Candice Kersh: Yes. A- and, and it’s, and it’s… It is such a great tool and, you know, where it is a bigger philosophical conversation as to whether it becomes another tool in the, in the toolbox or it becomes something bigger, that I don’t know. But it is something that is incredibly powerful and incredibly, uh, it, it is real, it’s gonna be there, and you have to use it, so the question just is, you know, how to do it. 

[00:25:43] Candice Kersh: And, and, you know, as I said, it’s, it’s, it’s, to me, it’s like anything in the creative industry. It… Teamwork, you know, right? Bringing in… I mean, I have a very, um, I’m very fortunate to have long-term relationships with my clients, and so I, I think there’s a trust there, but bringing people, bringing in your lawyer, bringing in people to really sit back and understand what you’re doing. 

[00:26:06] Candice Kersh: Somebody who’s going to bid out, you know, the s- specs with understanding what AI, somebody’s looking at those terms and conditions. And again, it may add an additional layer, but it’s certainly still going to be faster. Um, you know, and, and it’s great in, in its proper place.  

[00:26:24] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. Yes, I agree. So you’ve spent your career helping those long-term clients navigate big shifts like this in marketing and advertising. 

[00:26:34] Tessa Burg: When you think about everything that’s going on now and how that might land in the next maybe two, three years if you could- What do you think is going to be surprising?  

[00:26:45] Candice Kersh: Oh, that’s a tough question. Uh, you know, all of this is, is going to be surpri- I don’t know. I mean, as, as, as a consumer as well as a lawyer, I don’t know where this AI is going to shake out. 

[00:26:58] Candice Kersh: I don’t know if we’re gonna have this dystopian view of there are no jobs, everything’s gonna go, uh, by the wayside, or we’re going to have this be just another great tool to make life easier. Um, it- it’s certainly, uh, it’s hard to tell, and, um, I choose, as, as trying to be the perennial optimist, I choose to think it’s just gonna be a wonderful tool in the toolbox, and that, uh, this dystopian view is gonna be left to Hollywood. 

[00:27:27] Candice Kersh: And, uh, but it is interest- I could never predict, and that, it’s, it’s the wonderful thing about my job, is that I, I have been fortunate enough to work on such great creative campaigns over the years, and I’ve been able to work with some of the greatest creative minds in the business, and I just, you know, I… 

[00:27:47] Candice Kersh: My job is to try to help figure, help them figure out what to do, as opposed to trying to … ‘Cause I can’t keep up with them in terms of their, their creative visions. So it’s always… And that’s what’s fun. I never know.  

[00:27:59] Tessa Burg: Yeah. No, that is fun. I, I feel the same way. Like, I choose to have a optimistic view, and- There’s some data coming out now that I think validates that human creativity and human problem-solving is gonna be… 

[00:28:14] Tessa Burg: continue to be in high demand. And it’s the simple fact that companies who do try and find that least path of resistance to just license something, to just try something, to just do something, uh, are f- aren’t able to measure the ROI impact of that. And again, just have to like… Whether it’s with managing risk, managing liability, or trying to measure what something will look like at scale, you do ha- you have to invest. 

[00:28:39] Tessa Burg: You have to invest real hu-  

[00:28:40] Candice Kersh: Real dollars …  

[00:28:41] Tessa Burg: Yeah, real dollars, real human power behind how are you going to do this well in a way that serves your customers and the people at your business.  

[00:28:51] Candice Kersh: And- Yeah. I, I mean, you’re absolutely right. And, and, you know, as, as this is going along, it’s, it’s going to… You know, you have… 

[00:28:59] Candice Kersh: It, it’s gonna have a place, but from what I’m told, I mean, uh, uh, the, the… Certainly not there yet, where it, you know… Great creative still requires humans. Um, you know, I, I, I, I can speak to it from products of, uh, you know, not to malign anybody, but I see, you know, people… The, the legal documents that sometimes are sent to me, it’s just not there yet. 

[00:29:23] Candice Kersh: Um, whether it gets there in the next few years, I don’t know. But it- I just can’t see… The human element is, is just so important. It’s because it, it looks backwards rather than forward, right? And so great minds think forward, not backwards, and AI is incapable of thinking forwards.  

[00:29:45] Tessa Burg: Well, that is a great place to end our conversation. 

[00:29:48] Tessa Burg: We’re all gonna be thinking forward and continuing to lean into what makes us uniquely human. Candace, thanks so much for being our guest today.  

[00:29:57] Candice Kersh: Thank you.  

[00:29:57] Tessa Burg: If you know of, uh, where you’re speaking next, do you wanna throw out a couple of places?  

[00:30:02] Candice Kersh: Uh, yes. I will be at the ANA conference in Huntington Beach next week, and then I will be at the Ad Age, uh, small agency conference in July. 

[00:30:15] Candice Kersh: And, uh, I think I have a webinar that’s also coming up. But those are the two that are probably, uh, currently being advertised.  

[00:30:23] Tessa Burg: Awesome. And if you’re interested in hearing more from Candace, you can find her on LinkedIn or on her firm’s website. She has a fantastic bio page. And, uh, we’ll have the full transcript on modop.com. 

[00:30:39] Tessa Burg: You can also find more episodes there, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you can search Leader Generation. Until next time, Candace, we’ll have to see what happens in another couple of years. Thanks again for being our guest.  

[00:30:49] Candice Kersh: We’ll be back. Thank you, Tessa. Take care.  

[00:30:52] Tessa Burg: You too.  

[00:30:53] Candice Kersh: Bye.