The longtime ad industry leader and AI veteran says that AI could empower creativity – or cause it to stagnate. The crucial factor? Human intention. Long before joining IPG, Krakowsky helped to found an AI company that was sold to Apple in the late 1980s.
/ IPG AI’s recent and rapid ascent into into mainstream consciousness – largely a result of the proliferation of generative AI tools like ChatGPT – can make it easy to forget that the technology has a long history. The French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes theorized the invention of thinking machines – a precursor to what we’d now call AI – back in the 17th century. As an actual field of study, the origins of AI are usually traced to a 1956 conference at Dartmouth College, organized by pioneers of the field including Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy.
The point is, while AI might feel like an ’emerging’ technology, in reality it began to hatch out of its shell a long time ago. Advertisement Interpublic Group (IPG) CEO Philippe Krakowsky had his finger directly on the pulse of AI decades before the world had ever heard of ChatGPT. After studying comparative literature and linguistics at Harvard, he helped to launch an AI company that was eventually acquired by Apple in the late 1980s.
Krakowsky arrived at IPG in 2002, after stints at Y&R (now VML) and BBDO. Nearly two decades later, in 2021, he was appointed CEO. All the while, he’s maintained a fascination with AI.
In an exclusive interview .
