AI Can Make Images in Seconds, but Artist Doddz Says It Still Cannot Replace Emotion

AI has changed the creative brief. The question for employers is no longer whether teams can produce more content, faster, but whether they can still create work that carries meaning. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks creative thinking among the top five core skills employers need, alongside analytical thinking, resilience, leadership and self-awareness.

The risk is that businesses treat AI as a shortcut and lose the human judgement that makes ideas worth paying attention to. McKinsey’s 2025 learning analysis warns that over-reliance on AI could weaken critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving unless organisations deliberately build the skills needed for human-AI collaboration.

Doddz sits directly inside that tension. A multi-award-winning augmented reality artist, Founder and Creative Director of DIME, and creativity speaker, he has built his work around the meeting point of art, technology and emotional storytelling. His projects use augmented reality, data and emerging tools to make digital experiences feel human, not synthetic.

In this exclusive interview with the AI Speakers Agency, Doddz discusses how AI is reshaping creativity, why emotion must remain at the centre of immersive work, and what brands need to understand before using technology to tell stories.

Question 1: When storytelling moves across physical objects, digital layers and mixed-reality experiences, what changes in the relationship between audience, artwork and narrative?

Doddz: “There are a couple of advantages I see personally.

“I love the ability to have a physical piece of art or an object that grounds a wider story in reality, then overlay a digital experience and have that object or artwork do something impossible before your eyes.

“A lot of the stories I try to tell are about wonder and moments of awe. These technologies are powerful because many people have not experienced stories like this before. They allow you to create those moments.

“In terms of storytelling, an interactive experience also allows a story to move away from a fixed, linear path. It changes from something you simply observe into something you can be involved in, feel immersed in, and even influence.

“The emotional connection between the audience, the story and me as an artist, or with a brand, rises quite a lot.”

Question 2: In an AI-shaped creative landscape, how do you keep emotion at the centre rather than letting the technology become the point?

Doddz: “Everything I try to do is rooted in emotion.

“Technology allows you to tell stories and evoke emotions in new and interesting ways, but I see AI and technology in general as a paintbrush. It is a tool. You have to apply it creatively. You have to have the imagination to use the technology in new and interesting ways.

“In the same way, you cannot use a paintbrush alone and expect to evoke emotion. You need the idea and the concept.

“Even though we are surrounded by technology, and specifically AI, emotion is all any audience actually cares about. Even if you had a terrible piece of art or experience, if it somehow captured an emotion, it would still resonate. People would remember it more than the most beautiful AI-generated work.

“I see these tools as tools. The technology should dissolve into the background, so all the audience focuses on is the emotion.”

Question 3: AI has lowered the barrier to creative experimentation, but it has also increased the volume of low-quality output. How do you think serious creatives should respond?

Doddz: “It feels like we are in a period of fundamental shift in how we think as creatives.

“AI lowers the barrier to entry, speeds up experimentation and increases creative output. That is both good and bad. It is bad because there is now a lot of low-quality work pouring out, with more content and more experiences than ever before.

“But if you can harness the technology, even as an independent artist, you now have the ability to create some pretty amazing things.

“As a creative, you have to go back to first principles. Many of the creative decisions, and many of the things you think you know about being creative, are based in a pre-AI reality. Now you have to ask: why am I doing it like this? Is there a different way? Is there a different application or interactive experience?

“I have an artwork called The House. It is a painting of a couple buying their first home. You hold your phone up to it and can see inside the house, where their lives play out in real time. You grow old with them, and AI generates new textures for clothing and different assets within the 3D experience.

“That comes from asking what an artwork should look and feel like in a world with AI. You can go back to what a painting is, as people would typically experience it, but now there is a whole new world where you can create a new way to experience a painting.

“I use that as an example because I feel like it is a painting for the modern age.”

Question 4: Many creative professionals worry that AI will make work more efficient but less human. How should artists and brands approach that fear?

Doddz: “AI is often presented as a tool for efficiency, so there is an understandable moment of angst if you are a VFX artist, photographer, drone pilot or someone in a similar field and you think your job is going to be replaced.

“But it feels like a fundamental shift similar to painters being scared of the camera, and then photographers being frightened by motion pictures.

“These tools are not going to decimate the landscape so that no one ever hires another human again. That is not going to happen. But they will carve out a new way of working that will disrupt some industries, as technology has done throughout history and will continue to do.

“In terms of avoiding the fear that technology will strip creativity of its soul, you have to embrace it. You need natural curiosity.

“That does not mean you have to be at the forefront of every new tool. There are too many. But you should keep one eye on it. If it does not interest you, that is fine, but there may be an avenue where you can use it in a way that fits your interests or creativity.

“With AI, people often think about automation or image generation, but there are many different ways to use these tools. If you are not involved at all, you will start to feel far behind.”

Question 5: For brands using AI and immersive technology, what separates meaningful storytelling from technically impressive marketing?

Doddz: “Great brands are great storytellers.

“Marketing should not feel like selling the features of a product. It should inspire. It should be heartfelt. It should be a cool experience that somebody loves, and it just happens to be put on by your brand, while still making sense as something your brand should be involved in.

“From the brand side, storytelling and emotion come first. Everything else, including how to deliver it in a new and interesting way, comes second.

“From the art side, it all comes from trying to make people happy. The world asks a lot of us, and it can feel heavy sometimes. The artwork is designed to create moments of joy, connection and shared experience, whether through the artwork itself or the exhibition it sits within.

“In terms of public speaking, if I talk about the artwork, why I am doing what I am doing, or the journey I have been on, I hope that, like the artwork, people feel lighter at the end compared to how they started.”

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This exclusive interview with Doddz was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.