How Founders Can Leverage AI to Scale Creativity Without Sacrificing Soul

We’re well past the point where founders can ignore AI. The question isn’t if it belongs in your business; it’s how you’ll use it to create value without eroding what makes your company, product, or team special.

At Storyblocks, we operate at the intersection of technology and creativity. We serve creators — marketers, filmmakers, agencies — who need content that moves fast and feels authentic. Over the last two years, we’ve learned something critical: AI only works when it frees up more space for human creativity, not when it replaces it.

That’s not just a philosophical stance. It’s a practical one. Because if you’re building a business today, especially in a creative or customer-facing space, the tools you choose and how you implement them can either accelerate your team’s superpowers or dilute them.

Here’s what I’ve learned about using AI in a way that scales what’s most human about your business.

Start With the Jobs to Be Done, Not the Tech

When you’re leading a product or company, it’s easy to get pulled into AI for AI’s sake. But in our experience, success comes from solving real friction points, not chasing shiny objects.

For us, that meant:

AI-enhanced search: Our stock media platform hosts millions of assets. Finding the right one quickly can make or break a project. So we trained large language models to improve relevance, typo tolerance, and query interpretation. The result? Creators save time, stay in flow, and find better assets faster.

AI-powered customization tools: In 2025, we launched an AI Toolkit that includes automated voiceover (powered by ElevenLabs) and video editing (powered by Runway). But we didn’t offer text-to-video generation. Why? Because our users didn’t want synthetic content. They wanted to personalize human-made content, to adapt a voiceover to fit a new campaign or tweak a video’s tone for a different audience. That was the real job to be done.

Key takeaway for founders: Start with your users’ biggest bottlenecks. Ask: What would free up their time, attention, or creative energy? That’s where AI belongs.

Use AI to Enable Speed and Scale, Not to Cut Corners

For creators, speed is everything, but not at the cost of authenticity. The same is true for your team.

When we deployed our AI Toolkit, we heard over and over: “This saves us hours.” Hours not spent rewriting scripts or re-recording voiceovers. Hours not lost searching for footage or re-rendering videos. But more important than the time saved was where that time went — back into creative iteration, storytelling, and polish.

In my experience, speed only adds value when it gives your team more energy for the things AI can’t do: making creative choices, connecting with users, telling stories that resonate.

So ask yourself as a founder:

• Are we using AI to speed up what matters?
• Or are we rushing through what should still be human?

Build Trust Through Transparency and Intentionality

We’ve seen plenty of companies jump into generative AI without a clear ethical stance. That’s not an option for us, and increasingly, not for any brand that values its community.

At Storyblocks, we made a conscious choice:

• We don’t generate synthetic stock video.
• We don’t replace our contributor community with AI.
• We clearly label AI-assisted tools and give users control.

This wasn’t about being anti-tech. It was about being pro-trust.

We also reinvested in our Re:Stock initiative, an effort to elevate media from diverse, underrepresented creators. Why? Because we believe in a future where technology amplifies human voices, not just replicates what’s already dominant.

For founders building AI into products or workflows, here’s the lesson:

• Be clear about what you’re using AI for.
• Be transparent with customers and employees.
• And make sure you’re not automating away the values you claim to stand for.

Operationalizing AI Inside Your Company

AI isn’t just a product decision. It’s an organizational one. Here’s how we’ve approached it internally:

1. Democratize experimentation
We empowered small teams to test AI tools within their workflows, from marketing copy to customer service insights. Some things worked. Some didn’t. But we learned quickly.

What this means for founders: Let teams pilot tools. Create a culture where AI is seen as a sandbox, not a mandate.

2. Protect the creative process
One of our core values is to champion creativity. We never force AI tools on teams who feel they limit their process. We offer optionality, not replacement.

Your playbook: Use AI to remove drudgery, not autonomy. If your team feels like they’re working for the tool instead of with it, you’ve missed the mark.

3. Invest in AI literacy
We’ve hosted internal workshops, partnered with tech providers, and encouraged cross-functional learning. You can’t unlock AI’s value unless your people understand it and feel confident experimenting.

Advice for founders: Make education part of your rollout. A well-trained team will use AI both creatively and responsibly, and likely find value you didn’t expect.

What AI Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Replace

Here’s the truth more people should be saying out loud: the differentiator in this next chapter isn’t the AI. It’s the humanity.

When every company can generate the same voiceover, the same explainer video, the same template, what wins is taste. Perspective. Brand voice. Real storytelling.

For founders, this means two things:

1. Don’t outsource your identity to AI.
2. Use it to strengthen your creative moat, not shrink it.

Whether you’re building a DTC brand, a SaaS tool, or a creator platform, authenticity is your strategy. Guard it. Then look for places where AI makes it easier to express, scale, and sustain that authenticity.

Final Thought: You Don’t Need to Be First, But You Do Need to Be Clear

At Storyblocks, we’re not trying to win the AI arms race. We’re not competing to have the flashiest tools. We’re focused on being the most useful platform for modern creators. That’s what guides our AI decisions.

If you’re a founder, especially at an early or growth stage, that’s your edge too. You don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. You need to:

• Be clear about your users’ needs
• Be honest about your values
• Build with intent, not hype

AI can be a powerful accelerant, but only when it’s aimed at the right problems with the right principles.

So I’ll leave you with a question I often ask my team:

What part of your customer experience could be simplified without sacrificing what makes it meaningful?

That’s where your AI strategy should start.

About the Author: TJ Leonard is the CEO of Storyblocks, the subscription-based stock media platform focused on empowering human creativity. Under his leadership, Storyblocks has launched AI-powered tools that accelerate content creation while protecting artist integrity. He writes about the intersection of technology, storytelling, and responsible innovation.