While marketers find AI to be a great help, they are increasingly concerned about organizational readiness and the technology’s long-term impact on the profession. This is what emerges from a new academic study, “The AI Paradox in Marketing: Fascination, Resistance, and Reinvention”.
For the study, published in the Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, researchers interviewed 24 marketing professionals from organizations around the world. Participants said that AI’s handling of routine and repetitive work is giving them more time for strategic thinking.
“Even if you spend a few hundred dollars a month on AI, you feel like you’ve gained an entire team,” one participant said. “It’s honestly mind-blowing.”
They also said technology supports them in a way few expected.
“AI serves as real psychological support,” said another participant. “It helps reduce stress related to overwork by automating certain tasks, which allows me to save time and focus on more strategic aspects.”
How will new marketers learn the job?
The immediate benefits of AI are clear and appreciated by marketers. Their discomfort begins with the long-term implications, as AI increasingly does the work of developing marketing skills.
Writing copy, testing campaigns, refining messages and analyzing results are not simple production activities. They’re where marketers learn what works, develop instincts, recover from mistakes, and gain the judgment that prepares them for more strategic roles.
The interviews also highlighted organizational gaps that make AI adoption more difficult.
Chief among these are AI skills shortages, rapid skill obsolescence, and resistance to changing established ways of working. One participant highlighted “a real lack of essential skills” needed to carry out AI projects.
Artificial intelligence is not just another implementation of software
The researchers argue that companies need targeted training that combines technical skills, such as timely design and tool selection, with non-technical skills, including creative judgment, ethical reasoning and change management. Rather than treating AI as another software implementation, organizations should approach it as a workforce transformation that requires trust, experimentation, and continuous learning.
Artificial intelligence is becoming easier and easier to adopt. Building teams that know when to trust it, when to challenge it, and how to use it responsibly is becoming increasingly difficult.
Participants said that as AI takes on more and more routine work, skills such as timely design, data analysis and technical fluency become more important because marketers increasingly evaluate AI work instead of producing every first draft themselves.
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This places judgment at the heart of the profession. Someone has yet to recognize when AI misses the customer’s context, draws the wrong conclusion, or produces an answer that seems convincing but isn’t right. Participants identified creativity, ethical judgment, cultural understanding, and relationship building as capabilities that AI is unlikely to replace.
Marketing organizations face a challenge that goes far beyond adopting AI. As AI takes over the work that once taught marketers their craft, companies will need new ways to develop the judgment, creativity, and expertise that traditionally come from doing the work.
Study can be downloaded here. (No registration required)
