Broken Promises: Generative AI Arms Race Sparks Industry Backlash

Paul Riverbank, 12/29/2025Marketers embrace AI for faster, smarter content creation, but fragmentation and inconsistency persist. No single tool dominates as integration lags, leaving teams to patchwork solutions. The race for seamless, reliable AI platforms continues—promising, but not yet perfect.

Jon Weidman from Wavelength, an entertainment studio knee-deep in content cycles, put it bluntly: “Consistency is probably the number one thing that you’ll need to give people.” Hear enough professionals echo that, and you notice a pattern—most are less impressed by AI wizardry and more by tools that don’t force them to become tech troubleshooters. No one wants to lose an afternoon hunting down the right file or cleaning up digital artifacts that shouldn’t be there at all.

Google has drawn a lot of attention with its new image generator—Nano Banana Pro—tucked neatly within its sprawling suite of apps. The verdict from the agency side? Surprising precision. One director from a major shop told me that after using Nano Banana alongside rivals like Canva, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly, Google’s option outshined the rest. His words: “pretty dang good,” and, perhaps even stronger, “it’s our favorite and preferred image generation tool.”

Part of Nano Banana’s appeal comes down to subtlety. Rather than churning out visuals that gleam with that too-perfect “AI sheen,” the images look, well... normal. You might call it unimpressive, but, in marketing, blending seamlessly is sometimes the whole point. If audiences can’t distinguish between a photo and an AI creation, that’s a win in their book. There’s also a practical side to this: integrating the tool directly into Google Ads and Gemini means teams don’t have to jump between a half-dozen platforms just to hit their deadlines.

Still, the story isn’t all smooth sailing. Marketers are quick to grumble about quirks—one agency leader, Freddy Dabaghi, confessed, “If you’re using AI to automate a certain task, but then you have to move files from 15 different softwares, you’re not actually making your life more efficient.” It’s a complaint heard often, usually delivered with a sigh after a morning spent reconciling file formats that refuse to cooperate.

Google’s VEO, a video generation tool, has made noticeable waves in branded entertainment—some quietly say it has even edged out OpenAI’s Sora, at least for now. The big talking point with VEO is robustness. It handles everything from straightforward edits to elaborate lip sync and audio, leaving the usual batch of production headaches in the past. “VEO is probably the one that we use the most—it just is incredibly robust,” an exec confided, preferring to stay anonymous given competitive sensitivities.

Sora, meanwhile, isn’t exactly fading from the spotlight. OpenAI secured partnerships that allow users to weave beloved Star Wars and Marvel characters into their content—catnip for any agency with a pop culture brief. The lighting and mood it achieves? “A massive step up,” a creative director told me, although he quickly pointed out that Sora still stumbles on details. Skin textures sometimes careen into the uncanny valley; the human eye is unforgiving when something looks just a little bit off.

And then there’s Midjourney. Not long ago, it was the darling of AI image creation—now, its reputation is more “wild card” than go-to. The trouble lies in unpredictability. As one group creative director put it, “Put in a prompt and here’s four very different results. It’s the Wild West, honestly.” That’s not what big clients want. On top of that, legal skirmishes with heavyweights like Disney and Universal mean some agencies have officially blacklisted it for commercial projects. “Midjourney is basically a no-no for client work where safety and predictability matter,” another director admitted.

In the thick of this technological scramble, it’s clear there’s no silver bullet. Most marketing teams rely on a patchwork of tools to get the job done, hoping each new update will finally smooth out the bumps in their workflow. As one industry report summed up, “The promise of generative AI content creation tools is to expedite, personalize, and scale content creation. That promise still sits on the horizon as the onslaught of tools has made for a fragmented marketplace.”

So there’s no clear winner yet—and maybe that’s just how it is. Each platform brings something to the table, but none deliver across the board. At least for now, the smartest teams are mixing and matching, taking the best features from each tool and leaving the rest. The race isn’t just for smarter or faster AI, but for platforms that deliver on the simple but elusive goal: making life just a bit easier for the folks actually doing the work.

The hope for generative AI in marketing is simple—make campaigns faster, easier, and more effective. Yet anyone who has spent time wrangling with these tools over the past year knows the messiness that hides behind polished promises. Consistency, it turns out, is not just a buzzword tossed around in management meetings; it’s the one thing nearly every marketer seems to want, and, so far, few have found.Jon Weidman from Wavelength, an entertainment studio knee-deep in content cycles, put it bluntly: “Consistency is probably the number one thing that you’ll need to give people.” Hear enough professionals echo that, and you notice a pattern—most are less impressed by AI wizardry and more by tools that don’t force them to become tech troubleshooters. No one wants to lose an afternoon hunting down the right file or cleaning up digital artifacts that shouldn’t be there at all.Google has drawn a lot of attention with its new image generator—Nano Banana Pro—tucked neatly within its sprawling suite of apps. The verdict from the agency side? Surprising precision. One director from a major shop told me that after using Nano Banana alongside rivals like Canva, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly, Google’s option outshined the rest. His words: “pretty dang good,” and, perhaps even stronger, “it’s our favorite and preferred image generation tool.”Part of Nano Banana’s appeal comes down to subtlety. Rather than churning out visuals that gleam with that too-perfect “AI sheen,” the images look, well... normal. You might call it unimpressive, but, in marketing, blending seamlessly is sometimes the whole point. If audiences can’t distinguish between a photo and an AI creation, that’s a win in their book. There’s also a practical side to this: integrating the tool directly into Google Ads and Gemini means teams don’t have to jump between a half-dozen platforms just to hit their deadlines.Still, the story isn’t all smooth sailing. Marketers are quick to grumble about quirks—one agency leader, Freddy Dabaghi, confessed, “If you’re using AI to automate a certain task, but then you have to move files from 15 different softwares, you’re not actually making your life more efficient.” It’s a complaint heard often, usually delivered with a sigh after a morning spent reconciling file formats that refuse to cooperate.Google’s VEO, a video generation tool, has made noticeable waves in branded entertainment—some quietly say it has even edged out OpenAI’s Sora, at least for now. The big talking point with VEO is robustness. It handles everything from straightforward edits to elaborate lip sync and audio, leaving the usual batch of production headaches in the past. “VEO is probably the one that we use the most—it just is incredibly robust,” an exec confided, preferring to stay anonymous given competitive sensitivities.Sora, meanwhile, isn’t exactly fading from the spotlight. OpenAI secured partnerships that allow users to weave beloved Star Wars and Marvel characters into their content—catnip for any agency with a pop culture brief. The lighting and mood it achieves? “A massive step up,” a creative director told me, although he quickly pointed out that Sora still stumbles on details. Skin textures sometimes careen into the uncanny valley; the human eye is unforgiving when something looks just a little bit off.And then there’s Midjourney. Not long ago, it was the darling of AI image creation—now, its reputation is more “wild card” than go-to. The trouble lies in unpredictability. As one group creative director put it, “Put in a prompt and here’s four very different results. It’s the Wild West, honestly.” That’s not what big clients want. On top of that, legal skirmishes with heavyweights like Disney and Universal mean some agencies have officially blacklisted it for commercial projects. “Midjourney is basically a no-no for client work where safety and predictability matter,” another director admitted.In the thick of this technological scramble, it’s clear there’s no silver bullet. Most marketing teams rely on a patchwork of tools to get the job done, hoping each new update will finally smooth out the bumps in their workflow. As one industry report summed up, “The promise of generative AI content creation tools is to expedite, personalize, and scale content creation. That promise still sits on the horizon as the onslaught of tools has made for a fragmented marketplace.”So there’s no clear winner yet—and maybe that’s just how it is. Each platform brings something to the table, but none deliver across the board. At least for now, the smartest teams are mixing and matching, taking the best features from each tool and leaving the rest. The race isn’t just for smarter or faster AI, but for platforms that deliver on the simple but elusive goal: making life just a bit easier for the folks actually doing the work.