I am not an early adopter.

I resist hype with the stubbornness of a damp sock clinging to the inside of a washing machine. I still haven’t bought an air fryer, despite everyone telling me it will change my life. I haven’t watched The Traitors either, despite every conversation in January now starting with “No spoilers, but…” immediately before spoiling something.

So when people started telling me to buy a robot vacuum, naturally, I ignored them.

Then I bought one. And I need to tell you something important: I love him.

His name is Chris. He lives behind the sofa, trundles out each morning, bumps into a chair leg, has a think about his life choices, then carries on. A tiny domestic beetle with a work ethic.

Chris has changed my life. Well, a little. The floor is cleaner, the dog hair less victorious. I’d defend him in court if it came to it.

But here’s the thing. I still vacuum. Chris just does the boring bits first.

Chris is brilliant at certain things

Let’s start with the positives, because I don’t want Chris reading this and thinking I’m not grateful. He’s excellent at keeping on top of everyday mess. Dog hair gone, dust reduced, mysterious kitchen floor bits gobbled. He quietly does the repetitive work I don’t want to do, the “how is there already fluff in this corner?” jobs.

That’s where the comparison with AI comes in. It’s genuinely useful for:

• Repetitive or time-consuming tasks
• Starting-point tasks, like generating rough ideas or helping you bounce ideas around
• Summarising notes
• Tidying up a messy first draft and scanning things for mistakes (this article, for example).

Or just giving you something to react to when the page is looking too blank and smug. Even if it’s something rubbish that you can make great.

Used well, it saves time and takes some of the floor-level mess away. It’s useful in a busy financial services marketing team juggling client agreements, brochures, newsletters, and compliance-friendly wording.

But only if you know where it stops.

The stairs are still George’s job

Here’s where Chris falls down. Not literally, thank God. He has sensors that stop him plunging into the abyss. He takes one look at the stairs and says, “Absolutely not, Father. That is how small, brave discs die.” Or maybe it’s some kind of beeping and booping and the voices are something else.

So I still need George. He’s my other vacuum, a Numatic with a big smiley face and the calm confidence of someone who has seen some things. No, he’s not a Henry, he’s a George and that’s very important to him. George does the stairs, the awkward corners, the bits Chris simply cannot reach.

This is the part people sometimes forget with AI. It can be brilliant, but it doesn’t remove the need for human judgement.

Take a logo. AI can generate you something in seconds. What it can’t guarantee is that it hasn’t leaned too heavily on something that already exists. It’s trained on a vast pile of other people’s work and doesn’t know or care where “inspired by” ends and “too close to” begins. A designer does. Not a small distinction when it’s your brand on the line.

Same goes for a brochure. AI can produce something fluent and tidy in seconds. What it doesn’t have is the experience of sitting across from your clients, the context of what your firm stands for, or the instinct for the sentence that lands wrong with a nervous retiree. Which is exactly why George hasn’t found himself rolling down to the job centre just yet.

Sometimes Chris thinks a rug is a cliff

Chris has another issue. There’s a thick rug in my house he doesn’t understand. He approaches it, panics, and decides he’s about to fall into a dark and terrible void. He stops dead. He beeps. There is no cliff. There is only a rug. But Chris has read the situation with total confidence and got it completely wrong.

Hello again, AI. It can confidently produce something that looks right but feels wrong, like copy that sounds fluent but says nothing useful. Or imagery that looks impressive for half a second until you notice the hand has seven fingers or everybody’s skin has that uncanny waxy quality that AI images sometimes have.

It can look finished and still be wrong. You’d be amazed how much a human filter can catch.

A tool, not a replacement species

I’m not anti-AI, any more than I hate calculators that accountants use. A calculator can process numbers, but it can’t tell you whether a plan makes sense for a grieving widow. AI is the same: it speeds things up, makes the blank page less blank.

But in branding and design, someone still needs to ask: does this fit the brief? Will it resonate with the right clients? Is it accessible and consistent with the wider brand?

It can’t sit in a client meeting and clock the tiny pause before someone says, “I’m not sure that feels like us.” That’s still the bit only a person can do.

Send the robot out, but keep George on standby

Chris is brilliant. He saves me time every day, and has my respect, my admiration, and, if he keeps this up, a small stocking at Christmas. But I still need George for the stairs.

That’s how I think about AI in marketing and design. Use it, learn it, let it take the repetitive, low-level work off your plate. Just don’t confuse convenience with expertise.

And if you need a team that knows when to use the clever tools, when to apply human judgement, and when to rescue a confused little robot from a perfectly ordinary rug, we can help.

For more information, email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.