On the NoRobots podcast, Keith Burnson, co-founder and creative director of Better Off Studio, explains what AI slop looks like in branding and marketing, where AI genuinely saves money, where it falls apart, and why the result always depends on who is directing it.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
What AI slop looks like in branding and marketing
Vlad started by asking Keith to define AI slop. What makes something feel AI-made, even to a regular customer?
Keith says it depends on the customer, but he sees it most with small and medium businesses that turn to AI for speed, efficiency or budget reasons. Very often it’s generic AI imagery, because many clients don’t have the money for photography.
In UI work, such as apps, it gives itself away right away: buttons misaligned with text, arrows that don’t line up. Any good design or dev shop would catch those things in internal QA. He hasn’t personally seen many brands with AI-made logos, apart from a couple of small businesses run by friends. To him, a lot of what people make with ChatGPT or Claude looks similar to what you often get on Fiverr: generic, as if someone grabbed something from Pinterest and asked the AI to remake it.
Can customers actually tell?
Vlad mentioned studies where people say they notice AI instantly. Keith agrees that certain flyers and social graphics have an AI look. In his view, that usually comes from weak, generic prompts.
Anyone who knows how to creatively prompt, or how to art direct the tools, can get something different: “we like this flyer, we want this font.” But if you just type something like “my son’s 10th birthday is a pool party with snacks, make me a flyer,” of course it will look like AI.
For the clients Better Off Studio works with, he says, that kind of output simply wouldn’t get approved.
Should big brands keep trying AI campaigns?
Some big brands have tried AI campaigns and faced backlash. Vlad pointed to McDonald’s, which pulled an AI campaign. Will big brands try again?
Keith compares it to Kanye shooting a whole video on an iPhone. He got backlash for not hiring a production crew, but the point was to use a tool creatively and stand out. AI is the same, in Keith’s view. A brand like McDonald’s will get backlash from people afraid of losing their jobs and from “old hats” who don’t want to embrace new technology. But if the campaign looks great, the brand is on point, the copy is strong and it wins awards, he asks: who cares? Congratulations to them for making the robots work for them.
Why AI only gets a small brand about 25% of the way
Small and medium brands often want to use AI to save on creative and put the money into ads. Keith’s experience with smaller clients is that AI gets them about 25% of the way there. It’s great for concepting and getting an idea across.
The breakdown comes next. A client has a digital ad, but now needs it in print and on the website. There are no layered files to work from. The logo isn’t quite the right logo, the font is similar but not the right font, the image can’t be reused, and the typography can’t be broken down. That’s where AI is really missing the mark right now, he says. If it could output layered files, or connect to Figma through an MCP, that would help, and some people are working on that. But usually the studio ends up working backwards and reworking everything.
The upside: better briefs
Keith also sees a real positive. Clients who don’t know what they want, or don’t think of themselves as creative, used to be common. Now some clients bring incredible concepts made with AI. He would much rather get that than a Google Doc with a few lines of text.
Vlad added that complex tasks with many moving parts still need someone to prompt each part, combine everything and know how to set the tools up, such as Claude skills. Keith agrees: that’s why clients hired a studio in the first place. They don’t have the time. The clients who are tech founders, developers or designers know how to use these tools, but they’re rarely the ones asking why they need an agency at all.
Is AI creative acceptable in every industry?
Keith thinks AI is fair game everywhere. For decades, agencies and studios have been run by creative directors, the people paid to bring concepts home. If a creative director is the one prompting the AI, the result will probably be good, whatever the industry.
Where it can fall apart, he says, is in areas like media and news, where imagery can twist the narrative.
How the studio cut a $68K shoot to about $22K
Keith shared a recent example. A startup client in the THC industry had a great brand and product, and the studio built an incredible site for them. Next came photos and video. Better Off Studio quoted around $68,000 to hire models, find a location and shoot the content. The client didn’t have the budget.
So the studio brought in Salma, an AI artist and a close friend of Keith’s. The team creative directed everything, using the same mood boards they had prepared for the photographer. The price came down to about $22,000, the work looked great, and the client felt the studio had saved them. For Keith, that was the moment it clicked: the project would never have been possible without AI.
Where AI images cross the line
Vlad brought up a new tennis club whose Instagram was full of AI-generated images. An iPhone photo of the actual court and reception would be better. Keith agreed and added real estate and Airbnb listings. If a place looks amazing online and turns out to be different in person, that’s misleading. In his view, that’s not a fair or good use of AI.
What a small brand should invest in first
If you’ve built a Shopify store yourself and have a limited budget, what comes first: strategy, copy or visuals? Keith says it’s a mix of all of them. To launch, you need your product ready, with copy and imagery, whether that’s AI or shot yourself. The website needs a sitemap, page structure and content for every page, including images, video and copy. Then you need the skills to launch the store and run your POS or whatever system you use.
Anyone can do that, he says. You can literally ask ChatGPT or Claude to write you a prompt for each step. People just need to learn how to reverse engineer those tools.
How AI fits into Better Off Studio’s workflow
Vlad asked whether Claude Design, launched in April, changed how the studio works. For internal design, not really. The process is still strategy, then UX, design, development and support.
Where AI helps is organization: building user journeys and sitemaps from given parameters, faster than a person. Keith doesn’t want to say it’s better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it overproduces, so the team has to strip back what it doesn’t want. The studio has tried Claude and ChatGPT for designing certain things, but there are so many mistakes that it’s still quicker to do it themselves. Concepting is where it adds a lot of value.
A Shopify and Sanity backend in a couple of days
Development is a different story. The studio recently launched a Shopify site for a client, stacking Sanity with Shopify. Claude built the whole system and backend setup, and what would usually take two weeks took a couple of days.
Vlad noted that security still needs checking, especially with payments or API keys, since AI can end up putting an API key on the front end. Keith agreed.
Design still starts in Figma
Because the studio’s premium clients want something unique, design still follows the usual process in Figma: looking at awards and Site Inspire, gathering content, studying animation, building high-fidelity examples and testing them. Two people on the team tried to push Claude for this, and the end product looked like everything Claude spits out.
The team does have internal systems that speed things up, and it’s starting to use AI for rough brand identity concepts. Not for logos, but for off-the-wall ideas that would take four days to rough out. For example, if the idea is a mark inside one of the letters, AI can produce variations in 30 minutes. If the team doesn’t like any of them, it doesn’t go down that rabbit trail.
Should you start a career as a junior designer now?
Simple entry-level work is exactly what AI now does, so does it still make sense to start out as a junior designer? Keith thinks that if anyone will be saved from the robots, it’s creatives.
A lot of great campaigns, brands and sites come from mistakes, he points out. Happy accidents turn into something incredible, and AI is too perfect for that. His advice to people he works with: become a creative who’s really good at what you do. You’ll get better at creative direction, and that will make AI even more powerful in your hands. Everyone can be a bit of a creative director now, but the output is what tells the truth.
In his view, developers, copywriters and project managers have more reason to worry. There’s still something pure about making a brand or product look and feel a certain way, and about carrying it across every platform in a campaign. AI can produce email campaigns and social posts, but how valuable are they really?
Vlad added that someone still has to judge whether a campaign should go out to 30,000 people. Keith agreed: humans will always have a part in this.
Everyone got tired of themes, too
Keith reminds people of multipurpose WordPress themes. Every site looked like a theme, Squarespace built a business on them, and eventually people got sick of it. It’s already happening with AI, he says. The studio gets calls from clients who tried to build their site in Claude and hated it. Vlad’s take: it’s not terrible, just mediocre, and a site that looks like twenty others gives customers no reason to buy.
Does AI change what clients expect to pay?
Keith hasn’t had clients ask for lower prices because of AI. Most don’t know when the studio does or doesn’t use it. Clients with an agency, design or development background have looked under the hood a bit, but they don’t question it.
Better Off Studio runs on a subscription and packaged project model, with an offshore team it’s open about. Its prices are well below agencies in New York, California or Australia, so clients get strong creative at a lower cost. The studio is also considering AI packages. If a client wants a $100,000 shoot but can’t afford it, AI imagery could be a way to save them around half.
Vlad suggested setting terms of use for AI creative, since every round of edits tends to make the result worse. Keith agreed that everyday users get stuck in endless changes. Salma is different, he says: she builds her own models rather than using Claude or ChatGPT, and does AI commercials for brands like Pepsi.
About Keith Burnson and Better Off Studio
Better Off Studio is a creative agency built on a full subscription and packaged project model. For about the last ten years, Keith and his business partner Jay have lived all over the world and met creatives everywhere. They saw that great creatives outside the US don’t need US-level salaries, while hiring in the US had become hard to justify. That shaped the model.
The studio offers full-time and part-time subscriptions. Each client gets a dedicated team, such as a designer, a project manager and a developer, or just a designer, with hours split between roles. A client can get a semi-dedicated team for around $15,000 a month, often 35% to 50% less than hiring for those roles. The studio also offers packaged projects for branding, websites and custom Shopify builds, priced well below big-city agencies. New clients usually start with a package and then move to a subscription.
FAQ
What is AI slop in branding?
Generic AI imagery and design made from weak prompts: stock-looking visuals, misaligned UI elements, and work that looks like a remake of something found on Pinterest.
Can small brands rely on AI for their creative?
Keith says AI gets small brands about 25% of the way there. It’s great for concepts, but it doesn’t produce layered, reusable files for print, web and campaigns.
How can AI lower the cost of a photo shoot?
In one Better Off Studio project, an AI artist working from the studio’s creative direction and mood boards cut a quoted $68,000 shoot to about $22,000.
Is AI creative acceptable in every industry?
Keith thinks so, as long as a skilled creative director guides it. He draws the line at misleading uses, such as real estate or rental photos that don’t match reality.
Should new designers worry about AI?
Keith believes creatives are among the safest roles. He advises new designers to become genuinely strong at their craft, because creative direction makes AI more powerful.
Who is Keith Burnson?
Keith Burnson is the co-founder and creative director of Better Off Studio, a creative agency that offers design, branding and development through subscriptions and packaged projects.
Where to find Keith Burnson
See the studio’s work and plans at betteroff.studio, or follow them on Instagram at @betteroff.studio. You can also find Better Off Studio on NoRobots.
Watch the full interview: AI Slop Is Killing Brand Trust. How to Use AI Without Looking Cheap.
Looking for a creative partner that uses AI the right way? Browse the design and creative agencies listed on NoRobots.
