Springboards, an AI platform, in collaboration with a collective of global advertising and marketing associations, has announced an initiative to establish the first comprehensive benchmark for evaluating the creative instincts of large language models (LLMs) in advertising and creativity. The initiative is supported by several prominent organisations, including the Advertising Council Australia (ACA), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), Account Planning Group (APG), D&AD, International Advertising Association (IAA), Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), and The One Club for Creativity.

The primary aim of the benchmark is to determine which LLMs are most useful for creative inspiration, ideation, variation, and problem-solving within the advertising process. Unlike traditional AI testing methods that typically assess logic, accuracy, and comprehension, this evaluation will focus on creative instincts. Key criteria for the benchmark include human judgment of insight, idea quality, creative variance, and creative problem-solving abilities.

Participants globally will have the opportunity to judge outputs in a "Tinder for Ideas" style experience, receiving personal insights about their creative preferences and the LLMs that best match them. The initiative is supported by a technical and research team, including PhDs in machine learning, AI engineers, and former researchers from Google.

Pip Bingemann, CEO and Co-founder at Springboards, stated, "Existing AI benchmarks test logic, accuracy, and comprehension. But advertising isn’t about right answers, it’s about originality, insight, and impact. This will be the first benchmark designed around the real creative instincts we value in agencies and brands so that people in creative industries can understand what models are good for the work they do."

Tony Hale, CEO of Advertising Council Australia, commented, "This benchmark is an exciting moment for our industry. Harnessing the potential of LLMs to complement and elevate creative thinking is critical. We're proud to help lead this industry-first initiative, one that’s not just pushing boundaries, but shaping the future of creativity itself."

Tom Roach, VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish/Brandtech, speaking on behalf of the APG, remarked, "There's a ton of stuff about how good different LLMs are at solving maths problems, coding and logic-based tasks and tests. But that's not much use for the creative industries. We need to know which models are best at generating new and original creative ideas, but at the moment we're all flying blind on that. It's exciting to be involved in a project that can help us be more creative with this incredible new technology and help the industry as a whole make better informed decisions on the AI tech we use to drive better results for our clients."

Zoe Scaman, Founder of Bodacious, added, "We’re at a crossroads in the creative industries. AI is already embedded in our workflows, shaping ideas and generating outputs, but we’ve had no meaningful way to assess its contribution to creativity itself. This benchmark changes that. It’s not about pitting machines against humans, but about understanding which tools can genuinely elevate our thinking, unlock new directions, and push creative boundaries. If we want to harness AI not just for efficiency but for originality, we need standards rooted in real creative instincts, not just logic and grammar. That’s what this initiative delivers. And that’s why it’s vital, especially now."

James Hurman, Founding Partner of Previously Unavailable, expressed, "The future of creativity is human – but AI’s ability to stimulate human creativity is exciting. Especially when we can learn which models produce the kind of interesting, divergent, and sometimes bonkers provocations that trigger our own individual creative brains in just the right way."