AI’s Role in Marketing: Mapping the Evolution of Creativity

This chapter traces artificial intelligence's (AI) evolution in marketing creativity, from automation to collaboration, highlighting its applications, challenges and future directions, positioning AI as a collaborator in marketing innovation. It presents the literature review that will discuss the role of creativity and creative thinking in organizations. The chapter maps and discusses the advances of AI in the creative marketing process by examining recent research since the introduction of AI into organizations and categorizing them in three phases: mechanical AI; generative AI; and collaborative AI. While AI's evolution from mechanical to generative and collaborative phases has revolutionized marketing creativity, this transformation also introduces a series of ethical, strategic and cognitive challenges. The chapter also discusses the challenges and limitations of such AI applications in marketing, to finally conclude and reflect on the future directions that companies and marketing teams can expect.