WPP aims to “democratise” AI with new Agent Hub

WPP is unveiling its latest package of AI goodies at CES in Las Vegas, namely Agent Hub on WPP Open which boasts “a new suite of AI agents that scale WPP’s collective intelligence, arming clients and 100,000 employees with decades of WPP’s world-class expertise for superior, more precise outcomes.” Phew..

An archive with bells and whistles then?

Agent Hub has four elements or ‘Super Agents.’

*The Brand Analytics Agent: provides on-demand access to approximately 30 years of WPP’s proprietary Brand Asset Valuator data, the world’s largest and longest running study of brand equity, to inform brand strategy and creative development.

*The Behavioural Science Agent: emulates the thought process of a behavioural scientist, applying proven frameworks from Ogilvy’s award-winning practice to help teams understand human behaviour and motivation more deeply and create truly actionable client strategies.

*The Analogies Agent: acting as a strategic muse, this agent finds inspiration and parallel situations from different industries, fostering cross-sectoral thinking and unprecedented innovation to solve complex client challenges.

*Creative Brain: a world-class ideation sparring partner, channelling 150 years of WPP creative intelligence for non-obvious connections and lateral leaps.

Good that the ‘ideation sparring partner’ got a look-in.

WPP CTO Stephen Pretorius says: “Agent Hub is how we deliver WPP excellence at scale for our clients. This is about human brilliance, amplified by AI, enabling us to offer clients commercial models based on business outcomes, not simply time and materials. Every agent in our Hub is human-driven, encoding the decades of insight, judgement and expertise of our people to solve real client problems. We’re supercharging the very best of WPP, ensuring that every strategy is built on a foundation of our collective intelligence.”

Chief Innovation Officer Elav Horwitz says: “Our approach to AI is an open canvas, not a black box. WPP Open’s Agent Hub is how we harness our people’s creative energy, curating the very best ideas and making them available to everyone. It’s innovation, democratised.”

And free? Some of it probably is on the principle that, once clients start using it they’ll pay for extras. Brave but does it attach WPP too firmly to AI? AI these days is like sourdough bread. Once it’s everywhere it somehow loses its appeal.