This edition of After Hours features a conversation with Niki Dunagin, an AI and creative collaboration expert. We dove deep into how AI can assist in unlocking new creative potential. Spoiler alert: It’s not about replacing creativity, but enhancing it.
Niki's bread and butter is helping early stage entrepreneurs leverage AI to build their business in ways that previously could only be done by outsourcing or hiring. Find her on Instagram or her website to learn more about using AI as a creative.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: AI and creativity can feel like polar opposites. Niki nails it when she says, "On a very surface level, AI and creativity do feel like opposite things. Creative people are like, 'That’s not me. I don’t want any of that.' They’re very ingrained in their work."
This resistance is understandable. Many artists, designers, and entrepreneurs worry that bringing AI into their process might dilute their authenticity or personal flair. But Niki challenges that narrative: "AI doesn’t replace you in your business; it assists you. Like a CEO hires an assistant to do their job better, creatives can bring in AI to handle tasks that bog them down."
AI offers a way for creatives to reclaim their time and focus. “For me,” I shared with Niki, “the boring tasks are taken care of, and I have so much more headspace for the things that deserve my attention.”
Niki agreed, noting, "With AI, I become so much more aware of how much I overthink... But with AI, I have a chatbot make the plans, and it’s done. I can just focus on the creative side."
Think of AI as the assistant who drafts your timelines, writes your first drafts, or helps brainstorm ideas. It frees up your mental bandwidth, letting you spend more time honing your brand’s vision — the essence that separates you from the rest.
When talking to Niki, it became clear that one of the biggest fears creatives have is losing control over their unique voice. We know the value of authenticity when it comes to branding, and that same value applies here.
Niki reminded us, "I tell people all the time, I have a lot of my content written by AI, but I edit it. It’s trained on my brand voice. I step in as the boss and make the changes I need."
Just as brands like Adidas know exactly who they are and what they stand for, creatives using AI need to train their tools to reflect their unique personality. The goal isn’t to let AI take over; it’s to let it handle the heavy lifting, while you — the creative mind — shape the final product.
Here’s the catch: if you’re not careful, AI can produce the same generic content we’ve all seen too many times. We’ve all noticed those cookie-cutter AI posts, like the familiar "rocket ship emoji" showing up in captions. So how do you avoid that?
"People will say, 'If you use these words, I know you used AI,'" Niki explained. "But you can avoid this by giving examples of your desired tone and voice. You have to train the AI to write like you."
This requires having a deep understanding of who you are, who your people are, and how you want to position your brand– a step that can't be skipped.
Niki's course, CEO of Chatbots, starts with a brand building exercise before ever touching AI. The key to truly having AI be effective in your business is understanding who you are as a brand first. She calls this your brand Operations Manual, and it's used to train your custom chatbots to know your brand voice, your audience, and how to do things like draft emails, social content, or plan launches in a way that actually makes sense for you versus being a generic response.
As Niki puts it, "Any great business has a brand guide, voice dial, or SOPs for content creation. If you don’t know your brand voice, the AI isn’t going to know it."
AI can’t establish your voice or values for you — that’s your job. But once you’ve locked down your Brand DNA, AI becomes an invaluable tool to expand and amplify that identity.
In our work at Supersonic, we always emphasize the importance of building a strong foundation. Whether it’s AI, a new social platform, or a fresh marketing campaign, the success of any creative tool or initiative always comes back to knowing who you are and who you serve.
AI can truly be a game changer for creatives, freeing up more headspace for what you love by helping you with the more mundane tasks. But like any tool, it needs direction and purpose. When applied correctly, AI can help creatives streamline their process, keep your focus on what truly matters. As Niki pointed out, it’s about using AI as an assistant, not a replacement.
