How AI Is Quietly Devaluing Advertising

Two Words That Stopped Me

I recently came across two Marathi advertisements that used the words "हैराण" and "झिजणे". Both stopped me — not because they were grammatically wrong, but because neither sounded like the Marathi an ordinary Marathi consumer would naturally speak. 

 

 

 

That is where my mind turned to autotranslation and technology. It is the age of technology even in advertising, and it has known benefits — there is no argument to that. But the same technology is also creating shocks in the system, as well as giving rise to problems. The bigger issue is that the industry seems to be blissfully unaware of the downrange as well as the immediate challenges being raised by the entry of technology into this field — a domain that was, hitherto, purely creative-based, human-based.

 

The Real Danger

The advent of AI and technology in advertising has carried with it an interesting side-effect: the vernacular versions losing their quality. Obviously it is expensive to make ads in each language, so they are dubbed. But the translations are either strange, inaccurate, or inordinately tough to understand — making it hard even for native speakers of the language. 

 

Here is the nuance worth holding on to: the danger isn't AI making advertising worse. The danger is advertising organisations becoming less capable of recognising when AI-generated work is worse. By making production so easy, AI can make organisations less inclined to notice their own mistakes. And advertising ultimately exists to communicate with people. If the tools used to create that communication gradually weaken an organisation's ability to understand how people actually speak, think, and respond, the technology has begun to defeat the purpose for which it was adopted.

 

This shows up as three connected problems the industry is currently battling:

• The Uncanny Valley of Text: copy that is grammatically flawless but culturally hollow and devoid of human warmth.
• The Mediocrity Trap: a growing willingness to accept "good enough" outputs simply because they were generated instantly and practically for free.
• Process Bypass: the dangerous habit of skipping the essential human vetting phase that traditionally caught tone-deaf or clumsy messaging.

 

हैराण and झिजणे: What They Actually Show

As I said, I recently saw two Marathi ads using the words हैराण and झिजणे.

हैराण is not originally Marathi but a more recent, Hindi-rooted addition to the spoken tongue, and it is almost never used in daily language. It may be understood by Marathi speakers, but it is not the natural choice in much everyday Marathi, and its use can immediately signal translated or non-native copy.

झिजणे is the more interesting case — the word is Marathi, but again, not in popular spoken usage. It is a real word carrying real meaning, just not one an ordinary consumer reaches for.

 

Where the Errors Come From

There are a few explanations for how words like these end up in a script. The chances are that these are translations or copywriting done by non-native speakers. Or, some tool has been used to translate — and even if the scriptwriter was native Marathi, not enough care has been given to the words. That is the third possibility: the acceptance of mediocrity I have pointed to in an earlier piece.

A fourth possibility: plain, blind technology dependence, and a lack of application of the basic processes that go into making an advertisement.

Whatever the case, this is strong proof of the rising chances of new errors in the modern, technology-enabled workspace. AI is good, and technology is no doubt helpful — but one has to stop and ask, as an advertiser and as a marketer: what is going on? Why can't we simply apply ourselves, understand the customer, and then create the advertisement?

 

It Is Human to Err

Where will this newfound penchant for using technology in the process lead us to? It is human to err — let us not now believe we are error-proof. We made errors in the manual era, and we will make them now as well. The errors will now, perforce, be slightly different, and will include new ones besides.

 

What This Means for the Creative Realm

What this means for the creative realm is twofold: a rising risk of the average and the bad advertisement creeping into our ad campaigns, and, alongside it, a disconnect with the customer base that is only visible with a lag of time. This is bound to create challenges down the road for agencies and marketing teams alike, as stakeholders start questioning the work.

It may seem a minor point. But if minor points are creeping in — where is the guarantee that other, larger problems aren't creeping in already?

 

The Fall in Grace of Copywriters

This is also a sign of a fifth, more conceptual shift now taking place inside advertising and marketing: the fall in grace of scriptwriters and copywriters, as LLMs have made creating copy easier, translation a one-click affair, and writing storyboards as simple as dipping a biscuit in your coffee.

 

This is a sign of the fall in grace of script and copy writers — the ones who would not likely make such mistakes. They know that the words used in a copy or script should be in language the audience connects with. We are not trying to knock the socks off the audience, so to speak; we are not trying to impress them with our command of the local language. This is something that has clearly not occurred to the ad makers and their teams.

 

Putting Words Together Is Not Writing

The belief that writing is merely "putting words together" has led to the current devaluation of scriptwriters and copywriters. Great writers do not just translate language — they translate human insight. By using AI to churn out storyboards and copy as easily as dipping a biscuit in coffee, the industry is trading emotional intelligence for mere output volume. The craft of persuasion is being replaced by the mechanics of production.

 

Communication Is Fundamental

I have no doubt these streams will bounce back once other, bigger errors happen, bringing native craft back into fashion again. But in the meantime, the customer communication that goes outward from the brand is bound to suffer. And that is fundamental to brand management: communication. If you cannot communicate and build an engaged conversation with your customers, you are going to face problems.

 

The sooner marketing realises this, the better.