Springboards Launches Flint, an AI Model Built for Creative Thinking
Springboards, an advertising-focused AI platform, has released Flint, a new AI model designed to generate diverse creative outputs rather than polished, predictable ones. The launch includes a redesigned platform with free and paid tiers now open to all users.
Flint differs from mainstream large language models by prioritizing variation over accuracy. While ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude compete on precision and predictability, Flint explores broader possibilities and less obvious directions-what Springboards calls "hallucinations" in traditional AI terms.
Co-founder Pip Bingemann explained the reasoning: "Your ChatGPTs, your Geminis, your Anthropics; they're all competing on two things. They're competing to be the front page of the internet, the next Google, and they're competing to be coding agents. In those worlds, you want accuracy, you want predictability."
In creative work, predictability becomes a liability. "Hallucinations are the cool thing, the fun thing in the creative world," Bingemann said.
Performance in Creative Tasks
Testing shows Flint significantly outperforms leading LLMs on creative diversity. Novelty Bench, an independent research benchmark for evaluating creative output quality, scored Flint 7/10 compared to an average of 2.88 for competitors. This means Flint generates seven functionally distinct responses per 10 prompts.
Chief technology officer Kieran Browne said the team is releasing an alpha version to gather feedback before any beta release. "We're not committing to holding this exact version of the model for any given period of time," Browne said. "We'll continue trying to push it and trying to drive more variation in the model."
Platform Updates and Access
The redesigned platform includes an updated interface built for advertising and marketing workflows. Springboards previously operated as a sales-led business serving agencies and in-house teams. As of this week, the platform is open to freelancers, small brands, and individuals.
Co-founder Amy Tucker said the goal is designing "around human craft and thinking-that person who knows what good looks like, to then know they are the brand custodian."
Springboards is also launching Spark Sessions, a webinar series featuring industry practitioners including Mark Pollard, James Hurman, Tom Morton, Lucy Verby, Faris Yakob, Rosie Yakob, and Zoe Scaman.
For creatives looking to understand how AI models work and their applications in your field, resources on AI for Creatives and Generative AI and LLM Courses provide foundational knowledge on these tools and their capabilities.
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