Unleashing human ingenuity: Empowering creative teams in the age of AI

Creative operations is undergoing a rapid transformation, thanks to the rise of AI and breakthrough workflow automation tools. But we’re also at a critical turning point, and it’s become clear that chasing every new AI tool isn’t going to result in the efficiency, clarity, and freedom that creative ops teams are seeking. 

At the recent Henry Stewart Creative Operations Conference in New York City, I had the opportunity to unveil our latest research on AI and share my perspective on how we’re scaling creative work at Wrike, combining the best of AI, AI agents, workflow optimization, and our people’s unique strengths. 

If you weren’t able to make it to the conference, I want to share a few key takeaways all creative operations teams can benefit from. 

1. Creative operations teams are drowning in ‘tech for tech’s sake’

I’m all too aware of just how tempting it is to jump at every incoming AI tool, stacking platform on top of platform, in the hopes you’ll achieve productivity bliss. It’s something we face every week at Wrike, because new AI apps can look really appealing at surface level. In fact, according to McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report, 78% of respondents say their organizations use AI in at least one business function, up from 72% in early 2024 and 55% a year earlier.

Unfortunately, more tech alone won’t get you to real productivity gains. In fact, we’re only too aware that creative teams are actually drowning in tech that’s robbing them of creative time and energy. 

We recently surveyed over 1,000 enterprise knowledge workers in our AI PulseCheck: The State of the Data-Driven Workplace survey. We asked these industry insiders about their biggest challenges, and the results confirmed what we’ve heard from clients across the industry:

• 41% said they lose critical data in siloed platforms.
• 37% can’t easily surface knowledge buried in threads and folders.
• 36% struggle with unstructured or missing workflows.

Workflow bottlenecks, like lost files, multiple reworks, and delayed feedback, are exactly what AI and automation need to address if we want to unlock real creative power. And that’s exactly what we’re striving to provide here at Wrike. 

Workflow bottlenecks, like lost files, multiple reworks, and delayed feedback, are exactly what AI and automation need to address if we want to unlock real creative power. And that’s exactly what we’re striving to provide here at Wrike. 

2. AI tools and AI agents are not the same — and you need both for real productivity gains

At Wrike, we have AI tools baked into our platform, offering the option to summarize long comment threads, translate text, create briefs, and so much more with our Work Intelligence® features. 

Remember, AI tools help you create content faster, automate repeatable processes, and create briefs from meeting notes. AI agents, on the other hand, take it a step further; they understand tasks, act autonomously, and continually adapt to your process.

We’re already imagining an intake agent for creative briefs that checks for missing info and automatically routes projects based on approval history, and we’re envisioning a campaign performance agent that proactively suggests new asset variations before someone even asks.

The ultimate goal when we’re creating AI agents is orchestrating entire workflows (such as with our MCP Server update), not just speeding up smaller pieces of work. That’s where the real productivity gains are. We won’t get there through automation alone, but through acceleration powered by context-aware AI and the interoperability of AI systems.

3. AI adoption for creative teams requires best practices and effective guardrails

We use a best practices framework at Wrike to keep creative work moving at top speed, with better output and better use of resources. But we also keep humans in the loop to mitigate AI misuse. It’s a whole new frontier out there, and this powerful combination is resulting in significant increases in efficiency — which gives our teams more space for innovation. 

Here’s a look at our best practices framework for engaging with AI. At Wrike, we: 

1. Diagnose workflow bottlenecks: We dig deep into delays, duplicated work, and approval gridlock.
2. Automate repetitive tasks: AI now handles tagging, resizing, and formatting — so my team stays focused and designers still own the workflows.
3. Design the process for increased workflow visibility: Real-time dashboards highlight in-flight, at-risk, and blocked projects.
4. Measure impact, not just output: We look at time reclaimed, not just work produced. Each of our teams targets 10-15% time saved from AI-augmented workflows, and we put that time straight back to high-value work.

Guardrails are essential to protecting our product and our teams in this new era of AI. That’s why our visuals undergo human review for brand alignment, accessibility, and emotional appropriateness, and content is always reviewed for nuance, tone, and alignment with strategic messaging.

Our goal is to expand these protections as we explore scaling our agent vision:

• AI agents could soon support real-time compliance, flagging content that could trigger legal, regulatory, or reputational risk before it’s ever published. 
• In campaign execution, agents could coordinate cross-functional inputs, ensuring no piece of messaging goes live without review from brand, legal, policy, and demand generation stakeholders. 

These protections aren’t about slowing teams down; they aim to ensure we can speed up safely. As AI agents become more involved, these standards will evolve into even more robust, automated checks so that we never put our brand at risk. 

4. AI can’t replace the human element in creative ops

No matter how smart our algorithms get, there’s no substitute for human intuition, nuance, or creative insight. Humans are the ones who can adjust a pitch mid-meeting or feel a cultural moment surging and know exactly when and which direction to shift a campaign. And humans can translate our brand values into just the right visual tone — not AI alone. 

That’s not a data or an execution problem; it’s a clear human advantage. Your team’s ability to read between the lines, to connect emotion with action, to embody your brand’s identity in everything they create is a clear human advantage. And it’s an edge we’re determined to protect.

Wrike’s vision: The future of creative operations

In the age of AI, we want to make it clear that we’re not just riding the AI wave. We have a bold vision for the future of creative operations. 

Here’s what I see in our future, with AI at our fingertips: 

• Creative workflows that actually flow, fueled by intelligence, not friction
• Briefs that write themselves and evolve with your campaign
• Approvals that route automatically, with full context, so no time is lost in translation
• Dashboards that don’t just track work but guide decisions
• And AI agents that don’t just react; they anticipate, coordinate, and clear space for breakthrough ideas

Creative operations is an incredibly powerful function within a marketing team: you’re a  brand amplifier, revenue driver, and culture shaper.

And you need systems that rise to meet that power.

If you’re interested in exploring how AI agent workflows and people-first processes can transform your creative operations, I’d love to connect. Find me on LinkedIn or set up a call with one of our sales team to get a personalized demo for your creative department.