In the Age of AI, Creative Feedback Requires the Human Touch More Than Ever

You cannot turn your creative kings and queens into pawns on a chessboard

Video review platforms and shared drive workflows have made feedback so easy that it’s changing the psychology of how we creatively communicate. You can scroll frame by frame, draw notes directly on the visuals, revisit your corrections endlessly and hide behind a digital buffer. Yes, it’s efficient. But it’s reshaping what it means to “give notes.”

Feedback has strangely begun to resemble AI prompting: short, prescriptive notes that are void of emotion. With remote work forever changing the frequency and nature of collaboration, we’re now stripping even more humanity from the creative process by adopting tools that don’t communicate tone or context.

We are turning our most valued creative collaborators into button pushers, and we don’t even realize it.

There is a massive difference between a director asking an editor, “Can you make this funnier?” and “Can you chop eight frames off the tail of the first shot, switch take 12B and punch in by 20 percent?” The first lets the artist work. The other is prescriptive. If budget and timeline prevent creative collaboration, so be it. Sometimes you must be direct and get it done. But if elevating the work is the objective, you cannot turn your creative kings and queens into pawns on a chessboard.

In our work at Picture North, we talk a lot about the “wow” moment. It’s the most coveted reaction we seek from agencies and clients. It’s “holy crap, that works!” mixed with “I never thought of that!” This is where the emotional connection to the work and the people behind it is forged. It doesn’t matter if you’re a designer, copywriter or wedding planner—you’ll never experience a “wow” moment on either end of prescriptive feedback.

We also practice a policy of presenting each problem with a solution. So, it’s my time to walk the walk. First, these tools are helpful. Remote workflows let us assemble a post-production team with an editor in Cape Town, a sound mixer in New York and a colorist in London. Online collaboration is the only way to keep up with today’s pace. And next-generation filmmakers are already exponentially more productive than their predecessors.

The problem isn’t the technology. It’s how we use it.

Why are so many creative partnerships getting this wrong? It requires more work. It’s much harder to construct thoughtful feedback than to blurt out “use this,” “I don’t like it ” or “try a different take.”

You would never communicate that way in person. Consider language that is suggestive versus commanding. Simple context like “let’s use this selection because I want the scene to be louder” allows your sparring partners to understand the “why.” With alignment on the “why,” it becomes easier to focus on the “what” and the “how.” That’s where craftsmanship comes into play.

In advertising, everyone has client relationships to maintain. My concern is that if this becomes normalized and reaches all the way to the top, we risk never really understanding the brief from a chief marketing officer, the direction of an Oscar-winning filmmaker or the true meaning of your cousin’s career vision board.

These tools were never intended to turn you into a film editor, Photoshop artist, or copywriter. But you might be working with people who are really good at those jobs, and they’re excited to share that expertise to make your ideas even better.

Compromising human equity with prescriptive workflows would be insane. Yet we’re doing it every day. Perhaps a little less tomorrow?

Thank you for listening to my feedback. I hope it’s not too prescriptive.