Creativity vs. AI: Who Wins?

Hey friends,

“AI is killing creativity.” That’s the fear echoing through creative industries right now. Photographers, videographers, designers — all looking nervously at tools that can whip up images, videos, and websites in seconds.

But here’s the truth: AI isn’t killing creativity. It’s killing inefficiency. The endless admin. The hours wasted in proposals, edits, and pre-production that no client wants to pay for.

In Episode 3 of the Dumb Monkey Show, we sat down with Ben Cooke (Recreate Australia) — a filmmaker, photographer, and self-proclaimed wild thinker. Instead of fighting AI, Ben is weaving it into his business. From recording meetings to auto-generated proposals, he’s freeing his team from grunt work so they can focus on what matters: telling better stories.

🎙 This Week on the Dumb Monkey Show

Ben’s story is a masterclass in embracing disruption.

📹 He started in photography, only to realise early that smartphones were going to wipe out half the market. Instead of clinging on, he pivoted into video production.

⚡ Fast-forward to today: AI is now threatening the “middle layer” of creatives — the freelancers who survive by doing technical but repetitive tasks. And again, Ben pivoted. He’s using AI to supercharge his workflows, not replace them.

For example:

• Meeting to Proposal → Record a client call in Fathom → Transcribe with Gemini → Drop into Canva templates → Push into PandaDoc. Proposals go out in hours, not days.

• Pre-Production → What used to take 10+ hours of brainstorming and frameworks now takes 30 minutes with AI. His team starts ahead of the curve.

• Client Access → Lower costs and faster turnarounds mean storytelling services that used to be “premium” are now accessible to smaller businesses too.

His point is clear: AI won’t erase the best creatives. But it will erase average freelancers who rely on technical skill alone.

💡 “If you’re not embracing AI, you just get out-priced and outworked.”

🐒 Avoiding Dumb Monkey Syndrome

Creative businesses fall into three traps that guarantee extinction:

1. Ignoring AI completely → “Our clients don’t care about AI.” Wrong. They care about faster, cheaper, better — and your competitors will deliver it.

2. Using AI like Google → Typing lazy prompts gives you lazy outputs. Ben and his team rely on frameworks and context to get business-grade results.

3. Outsourcing strategy to AI → AI can draft, design, and edit. But it can’t understand your client’s story, brand, or why. That’s still your job.

Companies that evolve with AI will thrive. The ones that don’t? They’ll go the way of Blockbuster, Kodak, and the friend with a camera who swore “phones will never replace us.”

🛠 AI Tip of the Week

🚀 The 5-Minute Proposal Hack

Ben shared his system for turning client calls into ready-to-send proposals:

1. Record your meeting in Fathom (free).

2. Export the transcript → drop into ChatGPT or Gemini.

3. Prompt: “Turn this transcript into a structured proposal: goals, deliverables, timeline, budget outline. Keep it <2 pages.”

4. Paste the draft into your Canva/PandaDoc template.

5. Send.

That’s hours of admin wiped out — before you’ve even left the meeting.

🧪 Use Case from the Episode

At Recreate Australia, Ben’s team cut 10+ hours of pre-production down to just 30 minutes.

That single shift didn’t just save time. It created capacity. More clients, more projects, more revenue — without adding headcount.

This is the real story of AI in business: not job loss, but job reshaping. One skilled strategist with AI can now do the work of three junior staff. The opportunity? Be that strategist.

💬 Question to the Tribe

A) Building new offers 🚀

B) Landing new clients 💼

C) Finally taking Friday afternoon off 🍹

Hit reply and let us know — we’ll feature the best answers next week.

📲 Resources & Links

🎧 Listen to the Podcast Episode 3 on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

📘 Book: The CEO Who Mocked AI (Until It Made Him Millions) by Aamir Qutub

🚀 Dumb Monkey AI Academy

📱 Dumb Monkey AI Academy App: Apple | Android