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How AI Made Us More: Surprising Lessons From Being in the Arena

date
October 28, 2025

Guest post from Greater Rochester Chamber member Truth Collective


Our AI journey started like everyone else’s: curious, cautious, and slightly skeptical. Testing tools, building new processes, hosting Bravestorms, and helping our clients move faster and go further creatively. At the start, it felt like something outside of us. A separate, maybe even threatening force we needed to manage, or at least cautiously understand.

But a funny thing happened on the way to ChatGPT.

As we dove deeper, we started seeing value in places we hadn’t expected. Beyond the obvious efficiencies and flashy outputs, there’s something richer going on under the surface. AI, it turns out, isn’t just transforming what we make. It’s transforming how we work, who we are as a team, and why we do what we do.

Here are three unexpected truths we’ve discovered:

1. It’s making us more human. Really.

Here’s the twist no one talks about: AI is freeing us up to connect more deeply. With each other, and with our clients.

Because the early stages of work now move faster—and often in real-time collaboration with our clients during a Bravestorm—we’re spending more time in meaningful conversation. We’re not burning cycles chasing rounds of revisions or waiting for “version 17_final_FINAL.” We’re building together. Debating together. And in the end, creating something everyone believes in.

This process of co-creation is changing things in profound ways. Clients are increasingly sitting beside us in that process, not across from us.

That’s a major paradigm shift. The traditional agency-client dynamic—long timelines, black-box thinking, and delayed reveals—is being replaced with something more collaborative, more immediate, and more human. The result? Less confusion, more clarity. Less tension, more trust.

We didn’t see that coming. But we’re glad it showed up.

2. It’s supercharging creativity—not replacing it.

AI hasn’t replaced our ideas. It’s strapped a rocket to them.

With new tools coming online daily, our team now has access to a creative playground that expands what’s possible. And we’re entering a world where nearly anything is possible. Need to prototype or animate in hours instead of weeks? Done. Want to generate mood boards, voiceovers, or imagery of almost any kind on the fly? You got it.

But it’s more than just tools—and this might be the most important shift of all. It’s a mindset change. People on our team are exploring way outside their traditional lanes—writers creating visuals, strategists bringing ideas to life in new, interactive ways, art directors experimenting with building apps.

AI is making us more multidimensional, more versatile, and more inspired.

Creativity has never felt more alive.

3. It’s daring us to rethink everything.

AI is not just a new set of tools. It’s a provocation.

As a business, it’s forcing us to look at every part of what we do. How we create. How we charge. How we scale. How we define value. In some ways, it’s thrilling. In others, it’s terrifying. But mostly? It’s liberating.

We’re stepping back and asking ourselves bold questions: What if we rebuilt our model around speed and strategic co-creation? What if we stopped separating brand and content, or ideas and implementation? What if “agency” meant something entirely different than it does now?

We don’t have all the answers. But we’re in motion. And the path forward, while uncertain, is full of possibility.

So yes, AI is powerful. But the real magic? That’s still us.

Our creativity. Our curiosity. Our ability to connect, to imagine, to make meaning. That’s what gives these tools value. That’s what makes this moment so exciting—and so human.

Take your brand to the intersection of AI and human creativity with an AI Bravestorm. Book a session. << Link to https://truthcollective.com/lets-talk/ >> Bring a challenge. Leave with what’s next.

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