After an 18-month internal refresh, IPG-owned Huge has emerged with a new mission—and a new suite of tools—powered by AI.

The cornerstone of its revamp is the Living Intelligence Value Engine (LIVE), a platform that uses AI to sift through data points—both traditional and non-traditional—to uncover insights for clients. Non-traditional data refer to areas such as cultural semiotics, or the ways in which people derive meaning via cultural signs. By funneling this data into the engine, Huge is hoping that more information can be learned about the consumer.

LIVE is intended to help brands discover audience perceptions as well as predict consumer behaviors. It can be augmented via collaboration with other IPG data platforms, as well as generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney. 

LIVE is the culmination of a process that began in June 2021, when Mat Baxter was poached from Initiative to serve as Huge’s CEO. Soon after his hiring, Baxter set into motion a plan to evolve Huge into a firm more focused on leveraging creativity in order to drive growth for brands. A new chief product officer, Lisa de Bonis, and head of data and insights, Frisco Chau, were quickly added to support this new effort.

But client attrition and a changing market weighed down the firm’s progress, leading to layoffs last summer and the shuttering of all but one of its physical offices. In a February call with investors, IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky said that Huge’s poor performance, along with that of fellow subsidiary R/GA, had “weighed significantly” on IPG’s overall U.S. growth. The headwind was particularly felt within IPG’s media, data and engagement solutions segment.

Also read: How AI will impact ad revenue in 2023

Hoping to improve its data capabilities, Huge has now turned almost entirely to AI. The technology had long been a centerpiece of the organization’s evolution, Baxter told Ad Age, but the recent success of AI bots including ChatGPT reaffirmed Huge’s goal: to use AI to sift through data and provide insights on human behavior.

Such is why the “LI” in “LIVE” stands for “living intelligence.” As Baxter said: “Artificial intelligence is great, but there are still humans in the mix. We needed a human-centered engine.”  

An index for creativity, powered by AI

Huge also unveiled the Creative Capital Index (CCI), an AI-powered tool born out of the data capabilities of LIVE. The CCI aims to help clients better understand how they deploy creativity within their organization.

Each of a brand’s assets is assigned values in terms of how they enable creative problem-solving and innovation, and the CCI tracks how those values fluctuate over time and compare with industry benchmarks. 

The CCI will be used to help better understand creative improvement, said Baxter, a potential remedy for the lack of clarity clients often face in understanding the concrete benefit of various tools. For example, many brands are using ChatGPT because they believe it streamlines creativity. The CCI can ostensibly measure this impact, track it over time and compare it to the impact of other solutions, said Baxter.

Huge plans to roll out additional AI-powered tools through 2023 and 2024, each of which relies on the data-analysis bedrock that is LIVE. Baxter declined to provide more information on these solutions.

Meanwhile, numerous other ad organizations are deploying their own AI tools to keep in stride with competitors. Accenture this week announced a $3 billion investment in AI capabilities, which will cover assets, tools, acquisitions, research and talent over the course of three years. The Brandtech Group and WPP have also made similar moves in the space. AI is expected to impact at least half of all ad revenue in 2023, according to a new report from GroupM. 

Despite—or, because of—this tremendous growth, leading technologists have raised increasing concern over the course on which AI is currently set. Warnings of harm to humanity, calls for regulation and an open letter urging a six-month pause on AI development have all been issued in recent months, yet companies focused on raising profits are clearly not listening.

Advertising organizations are equally on the hook for the responsible development of AI tools. As more solutions enter the market, the risk is only rising.