How is Chuck Studios using AI?
Chuck Studios is a creative agency based in Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Los Angeles. It creates branding, design, film and photography for food and drink clients like Heineken, KFC and Tony’s Chocolonely.
Here founder and executive creative director Olaf van Gerwen explains how they use AI, and how he feels about it.
You can see all the articles in this series here.
Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?
We aren’t like your traditional design agency. Instead of using graphical instruments like typography, colours and shapes, we use food to perform the same task of distinctiveness, consistency, meaningfulness and desirability.
In that space, it’s good to realise that the human brain is six million years into discerning what is edible and what is poisonous.
AI completely taking over food depiction in the near future is unlikely, because humans are too good at noticing what is edible and what is not.
However, it’s a helpful tool. The design of how food shows up in ads is a very creative task, and AI allows us to quickly iterate and brainstorm. It will make errors that possibly spark a whole new level of inspiration. It often has flaws and makes mistakes, but these unexpected results can be exactly where the magic lies.
Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?
We haven’t finalised our AI policy. We’re actively experimenting to see which platforms genuinely add value and which don’t.
For example, where it can speed up the work effectively or where it’s better to slow down and do things manually. It’s all part of learning how to use these tools well.
With AI evolving so quickly, it won’t be a one-off exercise. We’ll keep updating and refining it to stay in step with the technology.
When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?
Some dude on LinkedIn took one of our food ads for a global brand and regenerated it with AI.
At first glance, it didn’t look bad, but we happened to see this on the same day we ordered a high-speed motion-control camera robot (a very physical device), and it made us think about our decision.
The closer we looked at the regenerated ad, it became clear that the AI version wasn’t good at all.
Any designer knows it is easy to make something look nice, but super hard to make something look amazing. And obviously, the version it produced couldn’t have been made without our original work behind it.
Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?
As specialists, we need specialist instruments. We don’t need to be distracted by trying to learn every platform out there, which is why we built our own tool called Chuck.OS.
Under the hood, it uses the best AI tools available, but on the front end, it’s accessible to all our people, giving them an easy way to generate and improve images while maintaining brand consistency.
This is such a specific task that no other tool addresses it. Chuck.OS effectively unlocks every other technology and tool for our staff and creators. Training will revolve around that tool.
Another key way we’re educating ourselves is by bringing our creative technologist, Reza Harek, on board.
He’s a 22-year-old magician, effortlessly hops between platforms, digests information and makes it accessible for the rest of us. Old cats need to learn from young dogs and this is our way of staying in touch – and he’s phenomenal at it.
How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?
The creative process today is undeniably fuelled by AI – its quick visualisations, rapid idea generation and efficient process management have become part of our toolkit.
But its shortcomings lead us to use a hybrid approach of shooting real ingredients and meals first, then generating AI-led variations at scale, or to alter or improve a shot we created in camera.
We still capture intricate details in-camera, because we have to respect the laws of physics like viscosity and elasticity, which AI has no understanding of.
AI is excellent for creating multiple iterations quickly, but it falls short when it comes to triggering the subtle sensory cues, like the “deliciousness” of real food that our human brain reacts to.
Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?
We’ve worked with clients who wanted entire projects executed solely with AI. Both the process and the results were challenging.
Some now assume that everything has suddenly become cheaper, which isn’t necessarily true if you want to maintain high-quality standards. Many large corporations have committees dedicated to the ethical and moral implications of AI, and as long as they remain uncertain, we remain in the dark with them.
Philosophically, brands and consumers don’t actually care how an image is created; they care about what it communicates.
If you strip our work down to its core, it’s all just reorganising pixels. A camera is simply a digital acquisition device, storing data on a memory card.
Whether that data is captured through a lens or generated by AI ultimately makes no fundamental difference. What matters is the effect the images have on helping brands grow. The “how” is irrelevant.
Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?
Right now, we’re not using these tools enough. We need to train ourselves to work with what’s already available, but as we all know, the advertising industry is notoriously slow to adapt.
By nature, we follow trends rather than set them. That’s exactly why we need to be stricter with ourselves and push to do better. There’s real room for improvement, but it’s on us to close that gap.
Beyond the best known tools what is one AI tool that you would recommend to other design studios?
Ultimately, we’re designing our own tool because we feel the existing ones fall short in terms of user experience.
There’s no single solution that “fixes everything,” and honestly, if I had to name one, it would be Chuck.OS, but that’s something we built for ourselves.
The truth is the landscape shifts too fast for any recommendation to stay relevant – in AI, even a week feels long.
I’ve even tried building something myself with the help of ChatGPT, but it never came together as a finished product. It’s still just too complex for the untrained brain. At least, for mine it is.