Building AI for a More Human Future — A Q+A With Averi CEO Zack Holland

Building AI for a More Human Future — A Q+A With Averi CEO Zack Holland

Zack Holland, Founder & CEO of Averi, believes the creative industries are on the cusp of their most transformative era… one where AI doesn't replace human ingenuity but amplifies it beyond anything we've imagined.

In a world where 77% of workers fear AI will eliminate their jobs, Zack offers a radically different vision: AI as the great liberator of human creativity, freeing us from busywork to focus on what makes us uniquely human.

With AI adoption in marketing hitting 88% in 2025 and the market exploding from $47 billion to a projected $107 billion by 2028, the conversation has shifted from whether AI will transform creative work to how we'll navigate this transformation.

Averi, sits at the center of this revolution, building AI tools designed not to replace creative minds but to unleash their full potential.

We sat down with him to discuss the company's vision, the future of AI in marketing, and why building technology that amplifies human creativity—rather than replacing it—is at the heart of everything we do.

What draws you to this vision when so many see AI as a threat to creative careers?

Look, I get the fear. When you see headlines about AI generating art or writing copy in seconds, it's easy to think, "That's my job going away." But here's what those headlines miss: the most successful companies aren't using AI to fire creatives… they're using it to supercharge them.

Take Coca-Cola's partnership with Adobe on Project Fizzion. They're not replacing their creative teams; they're giving them superpowers. Their designers now produce content 10 times faster while maintaining the same quality and originality. That's not replacement, that's amplification. The creative director still crafts the vision, still makes the judgment calls, still brings the human insight that no algorithm can replicate. AI just handles the tedious execution.

The data backs this up beautifully. Nielsen Norman Group found that when people use AI tools, productivity jumps 66% on average. But here's the kicker… 80% of professionals redirect that saved time toward more creative, human-touch endeavors.

We're not seeing mass layoffs; we're seeing creative renaissance.

The statistics show 77% of workers fear AI job displacement, yet you're optimistic about AI's impact. Help us reconcile this.

The disconnect between fear and reality is fascinating. Yes, 77% are worried, but the World Economic Forum projects that AI will create 170 million new jobs by 2030 while displacing 92 million. That's a net gain of 78 million jobs globally. We're not looking at mass unemployment; we're looking at mass opportunity.

So here's what's really happening… AI is terrible at the things that make us human and brilliant at the things that drain our humanity.

It can't understand the cultural nuance that makes a campaign resonate. It can't build the client relationships that drive business. It can't provide the strategic thinking that turns data into insight. But it can absolutely handle the repetitive tasks that keep creative minds from doing their best work.

Our users at Averi save an average of 3 hours per piece of content they create. That's not 3 hours of unemployment, that's 3 hours returned to strategy, ideation, and the kind of creative problem-solving that AI can't touch.

The fear is understandable but misplaced. It's like worrying that calculators would eliminate mathematicians. Instead, they freed mathematicians from arithmetic to solve more complex problems. AI is doing the same for creative work.

How do you see AI enhancing rather than diminishing human creativity?

This is where it gets exciting. MIT research shows that human-AI teams outperform humans working alone, especially in creative tasks. But more importantly, 77% of marketers say AI boosts their team's creativity. That number has actually increased from 69% just two years ago as people gain hands-on experience.

AI doesn't make you less creative, it makes your creativity more powerful.

When GitHub launched Copilot, developers didn't become worse programmers; they completed projects 55.8% faster and reported 75% higher job satisfaction. They could focus on architecture and innovation instead of syntax and debugging.

At Averi, we see this daily. A marketing director who used to spend hours reformatting presentations now dedicates that time to developing campaign strategy. A content creator who was buried in social media scheduling is now crafting brand narratives.

AI isn't stealing creativity; it's excavating it from beneath layers of busywork.

The most interesting finding from Harvard Business Review's research is that AI actually promotes divergent thinking and challenges expertise bias. It forces you to consider approaches you might not have explored. That's not diminishment, that's enhancement.

What does successful human-AI collaboration look like in practice?

The best collaborations happen when you understand what each party brings to the table. AI excels at pattern recognition, data processing, and rapid iteration. Humans excel at context, judgment, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking.

Look at how Nike approached their Travis Scott collaboration. They used AI to generate over 5,000 concept images on Midjourney, but human creative directors curated, refined, and wove them into a coherent visual identity.

The AI provided the raw material; humans provided the vision.

Canvas has documented incredible results with this approach. Movement Gyms saw a 30% increase in creative output with 42% fewer internal design requests. Fleet Feet saved 120+ design hours annually while empowering local managers to create localized marketing. An insurance brokerage created 15 times more content in half the time.

The pattern is consistent: AI handles the production bottlenecks, humans handle the creative direction. Nobody's getting replaced—everyone's getting amplified.

Many worry about losing the 'human touch' in creative work. How do you address this concern?

This concern reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of where the human touch actually lives. The human touch isn't in the execution, it's in the insight, the empathy, the cultural understanding that drives great creative work.

When an AI generates copy variations, a human still needs to understand which one will resonate with the target audience and why. When an AI creates design options, a human still needs to know which one serves the brand strategy. The human touch lives in understanding people, not in moving pixels around a screen.

Microsoft found that agencies using AI for routine tasks spent significantly more time on strategic outreach and relationship building. Noventiq saved 989 hours on routine tasks in just four weeks, allowing their team to focus on investor relations and strategic planning.

The human touch became stronger, not weaker.

Besides, let's be honest about what we're calling the "human touch" in many cases. Is spending three hours formatting a PowerPoint presentation really human creativity? Is manually resizing images for different platforms really what we want to preserve about human work? AI lets us get back to what's actually human about our work.

What role does burnout play in this conversation, and how might AI help address it?

Burnout is epidemic in creative industries, and it's largely driven by the relentless volume of repetitive tasks. When 51% of employees feel "used up" at the end of each workday, we need to ask what they're being used up by.

Here's the paradox… 45% of workers who frequently use AI report higher burnout rates than non-users. That sounds concerning until you realize why, many organizations are adding AI on top of existing workloads rather than using it to transform how work gets done.

But when implemented thoughtfully, AI can be transformative for burnout. One recent study showed a 25% drop in emotional exhaustion in workplaces using AI tools effectively. The key is using AI to eliminate the soul-crushing repetitive work, not to increase output expectations.

At Averi, our users report saving 11.4 hours per week on average. When that time goes back to strategy, creative exploration, and meaningful work, job satisfaction soars.

The goal isn't to work more, it's to work on what matters.

Looking ahead 5-10 years, what does the future of creative work look like?

By 2030, the World Economic Forum predicts that tasks will be nearly evenly divided between human, machine, and hybrid approaches.

But I think the real transformation will be cultural.

We're moving toward a world where having AI skills earns you a 25% salary premium because you can accomplish what used to require entire teams.

The creative professionals who thrive will be those who master human-AI collaboration. They'll use AI to explore hundreds of concepts in the time it used to take to develop one. They'll spend their days on strategic thinking, client relationships, and the kind of creative problem-solving that drives business results.

New job categories are exploding…

AI trainers have seen 150% growth in job postings in just two years. But more importantly, existing roles are evolving. The graphic designer becomes a creative director. The copywriter becomes a brand strategist. The photographer becomes a visual storyteller.

96% of companies now favor candidates with AI experience. Not because they want to replace human skills, but because they want humans who can leverage AI to achieve superhuman results.

What's Averi's specific role in making this vision reality?

Averi exists to bridge the gap between AI capability and human creativity. We're not building AI to replace marketers, we're building AI that makes every marketer feel like they have a team of specialists at their fingertips.

Our platform handles the production bottlenecks that prevent great ideas from reaching their potential. Campaign execution, asset creation, performance optimization… all the necessary work that keeps creative minds from doing what they do best.

But the strategy, the brand voice, the creative direction? That stays human.

We measure our success not by how many tasks we automate, but by how much creative potential we unlock. When our users tell us they're spending 40% more time on strategic work and feeling more fulfilled in their roles, that's when we know we're building the future right.

"AI isn't stealing creativity; it's excavating it from beneath layers of busywork. The future belongs to humans who understand this distinction."

What's your message to creative professionals who are still apprehensive about AI?

Start small, but start today. The gap between AI-skilled and non-AI-skilled professionals is widening rapidly, and that gap translates to real opportunity, and real salary differences.

But more importantly, remember that AI is a tool, not a replacement.

Nobody panicked that Photoshop would eliminate photographers or that spell-check would eliminate writers. They became more capable photographers and writers. AI is the next evolution of that same progression.

The creative professionals who succeed in the next decade won't be those who resist AI—they'll be those who use it to amplify their uniquely human capabilities.

The future doesn't belong to humans OR AI. It belongs to humans WITH AI.

The most exciting part? We're still in the early innings. The creative possibilities we can't even imagine yet will emerge from this collaboration.

We're not building an AI future… we're building a more human future, powered by AI.

That's the future Averi is building toward, one creative mind at a time.

Averi is an AI-powered marketing platform designed to enhance human creativity through intelligent automation and strategic insights. Learn more about how AI can amplify your creative potential at averi.com.