“A New Kind of Creative Ecosystem”: AI and Art with Tonye Brown
Tonye Brown is a technology and change management leader with over 15 years of experience delivering transformation across public and private sectors.
As head of technology (EMEA) at Tag, he drives enterprise rollouts, optimises workflows, and grows major client accounts.
Since joining Tag in 2013, Tonye has progressed from implementation manager to global head of implementation, overseeing large-scale technology programs across regions.
Tonye sat down with LBB to discuss how using AI tools has assisted him in his role, using controlled experimentation and educating clients about the benefits of these tools.
LBB> What’s the most impactful way that AI is helping you in your current role?
Tonye> As head of technology, I lead a team of technology implementation specialists responsible for deploying our new AI-powered content engine solution to clients. I help shape the strategic vision for our platforms and contribute to the development of tailored responses to requests for proposals (RFPs) from prospective clients.
AI has been incredibly helpful in my role of making sense of complex ideas more quickly and clearly. It helps me structure my thoughts, organise information, and refine how I communicate insights. It also saves a significant amount of time in research and drafting, allowing me to focus more on delivering strategy and creativity to client projects, rather than get bogged down in repetitive or administrative tasks.
LBB> We hear a lot about AI driving efficiencies and saving time. But are there any ways that you see the technology making qualitative improvements to your work, too?
Tonye> Absolutely. Beyond efficiency, I think AI helps elevate the quality of my work by helping me think more clearly and creatively. I’m able to refine my ideas, see different perspectives, and communicate more effectively. By acting as a sounding board, AI is really changing the way my team collaborates. It helps organise complex information, surface key insights, and make sure everyone’s coming to the table with well-structured ideas.
For example, when responding to a recent RFP, AI helped us ensure every section of our submission was clear, consistent, and aligned with the client’s requirements. It refined our language so that all the responses were unified in tone, even though multiple contributors were involved.
The result was a polished, cohesive proposal that reflected our collective expertise and professionalism.
Instead of wading through busy work, people can now focus more on creative problem-solving and making smarter decisions together. It’s not replacing collaboration, it’s actually making the process stronger, more focused, and more strategic.
LBB> What are the biggest challenges in collaborating with AI as a creative professional, and how have you overcome them?
Tonye> One of the biggest challenges has been helping clients build confidence in using AI responsibly and creatively. While there’s a lot of excitement about the potential of conversational and generative AI, whether to streamline processes or enhance ideation, many brands are understandably cautious. Concerns around data privacy, model training on brand assets, and ensuring outputs remain original, compliant, and on-brand are very real.
To address this, we’ve focused on education and controlled experimentation. We introduce AI in low-risk, high-value ways, for example, by using conversational AI to accelerate workflows or generative tools to inspire ideation rather than replace human creativity. By setting clear guardrails, testing outputs against brand standards, and ensuring transparency in how tools are used, we’ve been able to build confidence and demonstrate that AI can be both safe and creatively empowering.
LBB> How do you balance your use of AI with your creative instincts and intuition?
Tonye> For me, it’s about seeing AI as a creative partner rather than a replacement for intuition. AI can spark ideas beyond my initial thinking and push thinking in new directions, but it doesn’t replace human judgment or understanding. My role is to apply instinct and experience, to provide strategic context around how we use the technology. We use AI to explore possibilities and accelerate the creative process, but the final decisions still have to come from human insight, to ensure the work feels original, on-brand, and is emotionally resonant.
LBB> And how do you make sure that the work produced with AI maintains feels authentic and has a human touch?
Tonye> Authenticity comes from how we use AI, not just what it produces. We always keep humans as part of the process, using AI to stretch our thinking, but then relying on creative judgment to refine, personalise, and bring the work to life. Some of our more AI-progressive clients have even added additional approval layers for AI-assisted content to make sure everything aligns with the brand’s voice and compliance standards. It’s a good balance, between efficiency and scale of AI with the empathy and nuance that only people can bring.
LBB> Do you think there are any misconceptions or misunderstandings in the way we currently talk about AI in the industry?
Tonye> One of the main things I noticed early on, especially when responding to RFPs, was the frequent conflation of AI and automation, particularly in the context of content production. While the two are often used interchangeably, they’re fundamentally different in both purpose and capability. Automation is focused on efficiency, streamlining repetitive tasks, whereas AI is about intelligence: learning from data, understanding context, and generating creative or strategic outputs that weren’t explicitly programmed. That said, the two can work hand in hand, with AI enhancing automated processes to ensure they operate at their fullest potential.
LBB> What ethical considerations come to mind when using AI to generate or assist with creative content?
Tonye> A major concern is the potential for AI to replace or undervalue human creativity and craft. Creative work often involves deep cultural understanding, emotional nuance, and context-specific interpretation, elements that AI may struggle to fully grasp. For instance, in areas like transcreation or culturally sensitive marketing, human insight remains essential to ensure messages resonate authentically and respectfully across audiences.
Another important ethical issue is the use and handling of client data. AI systems rely on large datasets, which raises questions about consent, privacy, and data security. Creators must be transparent about how client data is collected, processed, and used in AI-assisted workflows to maintain trust and comply with data protection standards.
Finally, bias and fairness are key considerations. AI models can inadvertently reflect and amplify existing societal biases related to race, gender, or socioeconomic status, leading to discriminatory or exclusionary outcomes in the content they produce. Ethical use of AI requires active efforts to audit, monitor, and mitigate such biases to ensure inclusivity and fairness, with some client partners opting for additional approvals on AI assisted content production.
LBB> Have you seen attitudes towards AI change in recent times? If so, how?
Tonye> Attitudes have shifted. Many people are now familiar with AI and its growing presence across industries. In areas like marketing and production, there’s a much better understanding that AI can be a powerful tool for enhancing creative output, especially when combined with human craft and expertise. It’s also increasingly recognised for its ability to drive time and cost efficiencies, particularly when paired with automation. That said, there’s still a level of hesitance to fully embrace it, as people continue to weigh the balance between innovation, authenticity, and trust in AI-driven processes.
LBB> Broadly speaking, does the industry’s current conversation around AI leave you feeling generally positive, or generally concerned, about creativity’s future?
Tonye> =I feel optimistic and cautious about the current conversation around AI and creativity. I’m genuinely interested to see where AI is heading, especially in industries where it’s used to enhance human craft rather than replace it. Within appropriate guardrails, when AI supports expertise, streamlines creative workflows, or opens up new possibilities for expression, it can be incredibly empowering.
However, as someone who sings in my spare time, I can’t help but feel concerned about how AI is reshaping music creation. The fact that AI can now generate or replicate songs at studio quality blurs the line between authentic human artistry and machine production. Considering there are only 12 musical notes with many melodies inevitably overlapping, AI’s ability to analyse and recombine these elements effectively raises questions about originality, ownership, and the value of human emotion in music.
LBB> Do you think AI has the potential to create entirely new forms of art or media that weren’t possible before? If so, how?
Tonye> In short, yes, especially through multi-modal experiences.
Today, AI can merge text, visuals, sound, and interactivity in ways that transcend traditional artistic boundaries. AI can generate stories that tell a narrative through words while dynamically creating visuals and music that reflect the storyteller’s emotions and tone in real time.
This means audiences will feel the sentiment as much as they read or hear it, creating deeply immersive and emotionally intelligent storytelling experiences.
We’re already seeing this evolution with the introduction of the world’s first fully AI-generated music artists, where everything from the voice and lyrics to the branding and visuals are created by AI. These digital artists represent a new kind of creative ecosystem, one where technology and artistry blend to produce entirely unique cultural phenomena.
As AI continues to advance, we’ll likely see more innovative, hybrid forms of art that engage multiple senses at once, with experiences that arguably couldn’t exist without the creative power of artificial intelligence.
LBB> Thinking about your own role/discipline, what kind of impact do you think AI will have in the medium-term future? To what extent will it change the way people in your role work?
Tonye> In my role as head of tech, AI is already making a big difference, and that impact will only grow in the next few years. AI is assisting in a lot of the routine, time-consuming work that is becoming automated, which means people can spend more time on tasks that actually need creative problem-solving, and deeper technical skill. Instead of focusing on the mundane, we’ll be able to focus on what really adds value.
Looking ahead, I see AI moving from being just an automation tool to becoming a partner that supports decision-making. It’ll help us spot patterns, predict issues before they arise, and offer insights that guide smarter choices.
That’s going to change how teams work and our leadership styles, with less time spent managing tasks and more time designing, integrating, and improving intelligent systems.
I don’t think AI will replace people in tech and marketing production, it’ll enhance what we can do. The key will be learning how to effectively work alongside the tech to amplify our skills and free our time to focus on innovation and strategy instead of admin and maintenance.
