AI as a Partner, with People at the Centre

Not so long ago, there was a small big bang. Suddenly, AI was on everyone’s lips and accessible to all. Development has been rapid, with functions and capabilities expanding constantly, and there are those moments when you think, I wasn’t expecting that… WOW!

What happened? AI is no longer a topic reserved for IT specialists, scientists, and programmers. Using natural language instead of code has made it widely accessible. Anyone can now generate images, create designs, or even program. But does this make everyone an artist, designer, or developer? What does this technology mean for us, and how do we choose to use it?

At BSH, Bosch’s home appliance division, we create WOW moments through a process we call “Experiment, Evolve, WOW”. We set ourselves a goal and explore how AI can support us along the existing value chain. In most cases, this means doing what we already do today, such as launching a campaign, faster and more efficiently. In other words, we use AI to imitate the here and now because this is where its strength lies. AI can recombine and interpret vast amounts of information at high speed but always based on existing training data.

This makes it essential for marketing and design experts to experiment with new possibilities, use emerging tools in a controlled manner, and combine them with professional experience and judgement. It requires a hybrid approach, a symbiosis of AI and HI (human intelligence). Equally important are the experts who evaluate outputs to ensure that they inspire rather than drift into the mediocrity that can arise without human oversight.

To make GenAI truly useful, we never begin with a perfectly formed solution, but with curiosity. Every attempt becomes an experiment that generates learning and contributes to an iterative process, taking us one step further with every cycle. We try things out, evaluate them, scale what works, and discard what does not. Through AI enablement, we encourage and empower colleagues in marketing and design to work with AI themselves.

We have created a framework to support this: We start with a briefing, followed by two weeks during which employees can try out and test their own approaches. Only then does the first internal review take place. This approach builds trust in the technology and confidence in their ability to use it to solve problems. Only those who experience AI for themselves can truly work with it.

The next important step in our AI development is scaling through trust. Defining and testing use cases is one thing, but the process becomes transformative when we can roll them out across departments or even the entire company because employees trust their capabilities and performance. Moving from use case to scalable workflow is the roadmap for our AI projects.

In this short video conversation with Adobe, you can learn how we are already using AI successfully at BSH today.

In our work with GenAI at BSH, we have experienced many of these WOW moments and have established use cases that are now part of our everyday creative work. We use technologies such as Adobe Firefly for text-to-image generation, Firefly Custom Models, and Firefly video features that automatically generate animated sequences from static images, as well as Adobe Photoshop for image refinement.

With this AI-supported toolkit, we create images of recipes or ingredients, for example, where our BSH food stylists and photographers work hand in hand with AI systems. The process is significantly faster than before, and when I say “faster”, I mean “much faster”. The creative decision about what looks good and what works remains firmly with our human experts. Technology provides the speed, while people provide the aesthetics, quality, and brand fit. What began as an experiment has now become a scalable workflow that allows us to respond quickly to consumer requests and continually integrate new ingredients.

In another project, we worked with Firefly Video and Firefly Custom Models to animate individual images or short image series. While this is technically straightforward, real added value only emerges when our creative teams work with these sequences. This interaction produces results that neither a machine nor a human could have created alone with reasonable effort. Yet the principle remains the same: With AI, we build the stage, but the staging remains human.

AI is a powerful tool, but the creative spark, intuition, and experience come from our people. That is easier said than done, but it remains our guiding principle: We do not aim to eliminate or replace human work. We aim to relieve employees so that they have more time for what truly matters: their creative work. This aspiration sits at the heart of all our AI projects: Artificial intelligence can take over routine tasks, but creativity, ideas, and visions remain human.

An essential next step is to continue developing and adapting these new possibilities to our specific needs, standards, and ambitions, and in doing so, push boundaries…evolve.

Of course, we also aim to simplify, integrate, and automate familiar processes wherever possible. Demand for localised and personalised content, images, and videos will continue to grow. But it is equally about the “new”, the “different” … the things that were previously impossible. This is where experts play a crucial role, acting as explorers, alchemists, and provocateurs who identify and cross boundaries because they see something others have not yet recognised. It is both risky and exciting because curiosity and courage lie at the heart of creativity and will lead to WOW moments that are not based solely on efficiency and speed.

Across all our projects, we are guided by a triad of technology, law, and ethics. Technology determines what is possible. Law defines what is permitted. And ethics asks the crucial question: What do we want to do? Only when all three elements are in harmony can we build trust in our innovations and meet the growing expectations placed on the application of AI.

My Adobe MAX session, “New Rules of Creation: Experiment, Evolve, WOW”, offers an exclusive insight into our new AI-powered creation process at BSH.

Sebastian Schwartze (BAS), AI Accelerator Marketing & Design at BSH, combines engineering, design, and user experience. His career spans concept development, leading design teams, and transforming marketing and design in the age of AI. He discovered 3D visualisation and VR at the age of 14, sparking a lifelong passion for digital technologies.

As Head of Exterior Design Development at Audi, he combined design with technology and developed future-oriented concepts such as the Audi Urban Concept. He led the Audi Denkwerkstatt innovation hub in Berlin to connect emerging technologies with the start-up community and received the Best Innovation Lab Germany award.

At BSH Home Appliances, BAS implemented a user-centred design philosophy and led a design team without formal design training. He created award-winning products such as the Balay wine refrigerator and the Constructa dishwasher. Today, he plays a central role in BSH’s global transformation towards an AI-supported marketing and design strategy.