AI is moving beyond content creation to reshape how brands decide what to build and sell
Most marketers use AI to write faster copy. A smaller group is using it to identify what products customers actually want - and which ones the company has never considered building.
The distinction matters. At a marketing conference in Gurgaon on March 26, 2026, a panel of marketers and AI practitioners described how the technology is shifting from a creative tool to a decision-making engine.
From writing better ads to discovering unmet demand
Zubin Kutar, founder of AI Fluency Labs, shared a concrete example. His team fed customer data, feedback, and call centre conversations into an AI system. The result: seven or eight product ideas that customers wanted but the brand had never built.
"Most marketing folks use AI for content generation," Kutar said. "Very few use it for decision-making."
Hansveen Kaur, vice president of brand marketing at B'spoke & eGenome.ai, described a similar shift in healthcare. Instead of generating generic reports, her team uses AI to map individual health data against large datasets. The output is personalised recommendations tailored to what is actually optimal for each person.
The pattern is consistent across both cases: AI's real value emerges when it translates accumulated data into actionable decisions about what to build, not just how to talk about what already exists.
Personalisation is now a supply chain problem, not a messaging one
Gyan Gupta, chief AI officer at Jindal Steel Ltd, reframed personalisation entirely. "The real personalisation is connecting your marketing to your supply, to your logistics, to your production. I should be producing what the customer wants."
This shifts personalisation from a marketing layer - tailored ads and emails - to an operational challenge. It means aligning what you manufacture with what customers actually demand.
Kaur added that AI enables precision at an individual level. "You can connect in the most precise manner based on individual concerns." But that precision requires judgment about which insights to act on and which to ignore.
Efficiency is now the baseline, not the advantage
Sonali Tripathi, vice president of marketing at Groupe SEB India, described how AI has reshaped the entire marketing workflow - from creative briefs to campaign execution to measurement. Timelines have compressed. Planning cycles that once took weeks now take days.
"You no longer spend weeks on planning," Gupta said. "Timelines are shrinking. If you don't adapt, someone else will."
The implication is stark. Speed and efficiency are no longer competitive advantages. They are now the minimum requirement. The real edge lies in how teams combine that speed with sound judgment.
Humans still make the final call
Despite AI's scale and sophistication, the panel repeatedly returned to human judgment. Tripathi framed it as "judgment at the boundary" - AI distils vast datasets into options, and the marketer chooses the most effective path.
Kaur put it simply: "Let AI work as your intern, not your spokesperson."
Markets shift. Consumer behaviour evolves. On-ground realities often escape datasets. The marketer's experience and proximity to customers remain essential anchors for decisions.
The adoption barrier is cultural, not technical
If AI's potential is widely acknowledged, adoption remains uneven. Gupta pointed to fear as the underlying barrier. "Like every new wave, people think it will replace them. It won't. It will make you more efficient."
Jindal Steel has responded with structured training across the organisation - spanning personal productivity, functional transformation, and enterprise-level impact. Kutar emphasised the importance of AI literacy. "Only when you become literate will you know how to use it."
The shift is as much cultural as technological. Organisations must move teams from passive users of tools to active interpreters of intelligence.
What creatives need to develop now
Prompt thinking and AI fluency emerged as foundational skills. So did the ability to interpret AI outputs critically, rather than accepting them at face value.
Kaur urged the industry to rethink how it views AI altogether. "We have to move from using AI as a content creation tool to an intelligence tool."
Tripathi stressed sharpening decision-making instincts in an AI-led environment. Gupta highlighted speed and adaptability as non-negotiable. Across all responses, one theme held: AI is not replacing marketing thinking. It is amplifying the need for it.
The question has already shifted
AI is already embedded across workflows, from product development to communication. Yet its full impact will unfold as organisations learn to connect these layers, turning isolated efficiencies into integrated intelligence.
The industry is still early. The question is no longer whether AI will change marketing. It already has. The real question is how quickly creatives and marketers can evolve from using AI to deciding with it.
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