Sola Mosuro, the newly appointed Creative Director at X3M Ideas, has said he harbours no fear of artificial intelligence displacing human creativity in advertising, arguing instead that AI is simply the latest tool in a long line of technologies that creative professionals must learn to harness rather than resist.
Mosuro made the remarks at the sidelines of the public presentation of the X3M Intelligence GenZ Drinking Report last week, where the agency’s Strategy Lead, Ayoade Omolola, presented findings to stakeholders in the marketing communications, consumer goods and beverage industries at the Lagos Marriott Hotel Ikeja. He was responding to a question about AI connectors now embedded in platforms like Meta and Claude that allow virtually anyone, without professional training, to generate ad strategies, develop campaigns, and execute creative concepts from scratch, at no cost.
“If the question is whether it makes me feel threatened, it does not,” he said. “Because AI is the tool. A creative person looks at the tool and begins to think of creative ways to use that tool.”
His position goes against the grain of growing anxiety within the advertising industry, where the rapid democratisation of AI-powered creative tools has prompted fears that trained professionals could be rendered redundant. Mosuro rejected that framing entirely, drawing a clear line between the mechanics of execution and the origin of a creative idea. “A creative idea does not start in AI,” he said. “AI becomes a means by which a creative idea can be taken forward, propagated, or executed.” He added that he personally uses ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and welcomes the shortcuts they provide, but insists those shortcuts do not define or diminish his value. “I’m a creative based on my innate ability and my ability to bring a perspective to a conversation, the conversation between a brand and its audience. That perspective doesn’t start within AI.”
The remarks carry weight given Mosuro’s standing in the industry. With nearly two decades at the forefront of creative storytelling in Nigeria, he has built narratives that inspire action and drive results across brands large and small. His career has spanned agencies including Dentsu mcgarrybowen Nigeria, Noah’s Ark Communications, SO&U, and CentrespreadGREY before his appointment as Creative Director at X3M Ideas, where he is expected to add fresh creative momentum to the agency’s broader ambition of delivering more culturally relevant and commercially effective campaigns.
To ground his argument, Mosuro reached for a historical parallel. He recalled the moment in art history when painters feared the camera, a machine that could capture in an instant what artists had laboured over for hours. That fear, he noted, proved unfounded. “Art is still so important today, and the eye of the artist will never be replicated by the camera,” he said. “How a photographer points the camera is what makes it art. In the end, it’s the same with AI.”
The context in which he spoke was itself a demonstration of the argument. The GenZ Drinking Report was conceived by X3M Ideas CEO Steve Babaeko on the premise that creativity is a structure and does not stand on nothingness, that the foundation on which good creativity stands is market intelligence, research, and insight. The study challenges the assumption that Nigeria’s Generation Z is turning away from alcohol entirely, arguing that the real strategic question for marketers is not why Gen Zs are not drinking, but whether the industry has been asking the wrong question altogether. It is precisely the kind of nuanced, culturally grounded perspective that Mosuro suggests no AI prompt can originate on its own.
For Mosuro, the debate about AI in advertising ultimately comes down to what creativity actually is — and where it actually comes from. Technology, he maintains, has never been the source. It has always been the means. “Anyone who is scared of AI,” he said, “perhaps they should think about that.”