Artificial intelligence (AI) engineers must overcome many “mundane” hurdles before reaching the “hype” depicted in movies and mainstream media, according to IBM’s Hugo Pinto.

Pinto – IBM’s innovation officer, centre of competency (COC) – delivered a keynote at the Festival of Media Global 2017 in Rome on the potential of AI to revolutionise marketing.

Focusing on IBM’s Watson AI, he urged delegates not to fear the new technology. “It’s not a brain hiding in a bunker in Colorado spying on everyone,” he said.

Pinto also promoted IBM’s new Lucy marketing cloud AI assistant, which he argued could save marketers time gathering background data and discovering trends to inform campaign decisions.

“How much time do you waste out of your day with those operational tasks?” he asked.

When asked if such AI software will result in all brands producing homogenous marketing content, Pinto insisted that, rather than removing individual creativity, it will allow marketers to do “much bigger things, much faster”.

“Bias is still there. You will still have different solutions to the same problem,” said Pinto.

“Before we get to that super-computer stage in movies, when they are looking to eradicate us, there are so many things we need to work out [such as] communicating across cultures. These are mundane tasks. It will take a long time for reality to catch up with the hype,” he added.

“We’re always going to be scared of change and the unknown. I have a positive outlook.”