AI Creates the Slides, But Creatives Shape the Story

There’s a fascinating dynamic happening in creative studios right now. AI tools like Tome can draft an entire storyline presentation in minutes, complete with slides, structure, and even visual suggestions. Feed it a brief about a new sneaker launch or a sustainability campaign, and it’ll return a coherent narrative arc faster than you can finish drafting a basic concept.

Impressive? Absolutely. Revolutionary? Maybe not in the way you’d think.

AI is excellent at assembly. It understands patterns, recognizes what “good storytelling” looks like based on thousands of examples, and can arrange information into a logical flow.

But unlike a presentation, a brand film is not just a sequence of events. It’s an emotional arc. It’s a perspective. It’s a pulse you want the audience to feel, sometimes without ever showing it explicitly. And no AI, however advanced, understands the unspoken tension, cultural nuance, or subtle brand truth the way a creative mind does.

AI Creates the Slides, But Creatives Shape the Story Img

Writing a story vs Owning the narrative

When a creative director reviews those AI-generated slides, something interesting happens. They’re not just editing, they’re translating. They’re taking the AI’s sensible structure and asking the questions that algorithms can’t:

Does this feel true to the brand?
Where’s the unexpected moment that makes people lean in?
What’s the emotional temperature of this story?
Does it match what we’re trying to make the audience feel?

AI might suggest opening with a statistic about athletic performance. The creative director knows to open with a close-up of worn-out shoes in a gym locker, because stories begin with details that feel human, not data points that feel informative.

This isn’t about AI being “wrong.” It’s about recognizing what each brings to the table. AI eliminates the blank page problem. It offers options you might not have considered. But it doesn’t understand why one metaphor resonates with a Gen Z audience while another falls flat. It can’t sense when a narrative needs to breathe, when silence is more powerful than another slide, or when breaking the conventional three-act structure is exactly what makes a brand film memorable.

It’s a Partnership, Not a Replacement

The best work happens when creative directors treat AI as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut. Ler’s say, use Tome to rapidly prototype three different narrative approaches. Let it handle the grunt work of organizing research or generating initial frameworks. Then step in and do what you are experienced in: making the choice that carries intention.

Because here’s what AI truly can’t replicate, your accumulated taste. The hundreds of brand films you might’ve dissected, the campaigns that moved you, the storytelling instincts you’ve developed through presenting ideas and watching what lands.

The creative director’s role isn’t diminishing in the age of AI; it’s evolving into something more essential. You’re becoming the curator of machine-generated possibilities, the strategist who knows which AI-drafted path to pursue, and the final guardian of narrative coherence.

Final Verdict

AI generates the slides. But you decide which ones matter, which ones to throw out, and which ones need to be completely reimagined. That’s not just editing. That’s ownership. And that’s a role no algorithm is ready to fill.

At Panorbit, this is exactly how we approach storytelling. We use AI to accelerate the groundwork, not to define the direction. The first draft may come from a tool, but the heartbeat of the narrative, its emotion, intent, and creative truth, comes from our team. We lean on AI for structure, speed, and exploration, but the final story is always shaped by human instinct and experience. Because a brand film isn’t just about what’s being said; it’s about what the audience feels, remembers, and carries with them.

At Panorbit, AI may help us generate the slides but the narrative will always belong to the creative mind guiding it.