Words:
Vero Maldonado

Visuals:
Leejay Abucayan

Mar 6, 2026

The Creative Frenemy: How We're Actually Using AI

Spoiler: It's not replacing us.

The AI hype is everywhere. Every day brings another clip of a tech CEO predicting a world run by robots. But at CōLab, WestCap’s internal Creative Studio, the promise of AI is far less intimidating. To cut through the noise, we wanted to start sharing real stories from our team, network, and portfolio on how we’re integrating these tools into our day to day process.

When the microwave hit American kitchens in the 1970s, an entire cottage industry of microwave cookbooks sprouted overnight. Microwave Gourmet. The Complete Microwave Cookbook. Even Microwave Cooking for One (arguably the saddest of them all). Everyone was convinced this magic box would revolutionize cooking forever.

Fast forward to today: we all have microwaves, but we also still have ovens. And stovetops. And the best restaurants in the world aren't exactly known for their microwave techniques.

As Leejay, our Principal Designer and Creative Director for all things Communications, put it during a recent discussion: "Even if you give a Michelin chef a microwave to try to create a Michelin star meal, they can only go so far with a microwave." But then our Executive Creative Director Salih added the kicker: "I think there probably is some Michelin star chef that could use a microwave to create an amazing meal. And that's because they really understand the chemistry of how food cooks."

That's where we are with AI in creative work. It's not about the tool replacing the craft—it's about understanding both well enough to know when and how to use them together.

The 6 E's, Our Creative AI Playbook

After months of experimenting, breaking things, and occasionally being wowed, we keep coming back to these six use cases:

1. Explain → "Teach me"

Since we work with investors often, we’re constantly trying to decode finance jargon. Brian Wakabayashi, our Head of Brand, found the perfect fix using Gemini's voice feature during his morning commute: "I'll say, 'Tell me about secondary market transactions,' and it'll explain it to me in layman's terms. Then I'll respond, 'Wait, what do you mean by...' and it just reacts in real time." He also uses Notebook LM, which creates short podcasts from any document, perfect for digesting those lengthy IC memos.

2. Explore → "Show me options"

Kyle, our Brand Designer, uses AI like a brainstorming partner on steroids: "I'll come up with all these brand concepts... Here's my list of attributes. I need you to turn that into a paragraph that can sell this logo direction to the client. And I need all the metaphors you can see in this." It's not creating for him—it's helping him see angles he might not have considered.

3. Evidence → "Prove it"

The classic use case: you've written a strategy doc, and now you need data points to back up your big ideas. Instead of hours of Googling, AI becomes your instant research assistant, finding statistics, and supporting evidence in seconds.

Kyle found an even more elegant validation hack during a recent brand workshop: "As the client was picking their brand attributes, I had mood boards all ready to go. I quickly ran them through AI against these attributes." Within seconds, he could tell clients which mood board best represented their values. Not replacing his judgment — just strengthening it.

4. Expand → "Build on this"

When it comes to copywriting, Brian describes it perfectly: "It'll land on a phrasing that I like and I'll be like, 'Ooh, that's actually a pretty good thought.' But it won't know what it has." After 50-60 generations, one golden phrase emerges. The AI can't tell good from great—that still takes human taste.

5. Extend → "Level me up"

Our Product Designer Yu's journey from non-coder to launching websites is the perfect example. "Even though it's easier than it used to be, it still feels complicated... it's still good to have a little bit of a foundational idea." AI didn't magically make her a developer — it extended her existing skills into new territory.

6. Evaluate → "Grade my work"

For Gretchen, our Operations Lead, it's the "thousand interns" doing quality control: "Things that used to trip me up for a minute—too many commas, not enough commas." For me, our Writer, it's the ruthless editor who cuts the fluff from my first drafts and helps me spot where the narrative thread goes slack.

The Last Mile Is Still Ours

While tech CEOs promise AI will automate creativity, here's what we've learned: AI still can't do the last mile — and likely never will. Brian discovered this after uploading every document related to one of our big projects: 'Where it fails is linking together a story. It spits out a generic strategy that doesn’t make any sense... And I just can't get it to do that last mile.'

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. The last mile requires taste, judgment, and knowing when something just works. As Kyle put it: "I don't think you can teach taste."

We're past the "everyone needs a microwave cookbook" phase. The creatives who'll thrive understand both their craft and their tools deeply enough to know when to use which.

The microwave didn't kill cooking. And AI won't kill creativity.

It just might reheat it faster.

About the author

Vero Maldonado is a Creative Director at CōLab focused on all types of content — UX, brand, editorial, you name it. She’s part wordsmither and part therapist, helping companies find the right way to describe themselves and how that carries across owned channels: product, email, notifications, etc. Vero started off her career at Path, a small social network and cult favorite for tech designers, before joining Airbnb in 2014 as the company’s first content strategist. She helped define and grow the content strategy discipline, while also crafting the messaging for Airbnb for Work, Airbnb Experiences, and Airbnb.org. Before joining CōLab, she did a short stint at Slack where she led a messaging overhaul of Slack Connect.