Exclusive: Bosch on blending AI with human creativity

Sebastian Schwartze is Bosch's 'AI Accelerator for Marketing and Design' and is in charge of blending technology with human creativity, and transforming how one of the worlds most recognisable appliance brands works.

"I'm an educated engineer and a designer by experience, but within the last two years, I also became a marketer," said Schwartze.

Schwartze's role was born from curiosity. "We saw weak signals in what was ongoing with visual AI content generation," he said. "We decided, two and a half, three years ago, okay, we need to look into that. And it became bigger and bigger, and we got a lot of attention by the board." That attention has since evolved into a company-wide cultural shift.

Now acting as an AI Accelerator, Schwartze's mission is not just technical, but human. "It's not directly about the tools," he explained. "It's more a cultural thing." His team's work began within marketing and design but quickly spread "like hell" across sales, engineering, operations and HR. "When someone has a use case or needs to overcome a challenge with AI, people usually reach out to us," he added.

From insight to innovation

Schwartze thinks about AI through what he calls the "marketing value chain": understanding customers, generating insights, and turning them into innovation. "You start with the information we have about our customers and their behaviours," he said. "Then you go to innovations - maybe a new campaign, or even a new product feature."

One of his favourite examples is the "slide and hide" oven door from Bosch's Neff brand. "It's so unusual that the door disappears when you open your oven," he said. "It's great for wheelchair users and removes the fear of getting burned." When a YouTuber in Australia discovered it, the clip went viral. "What we try to identify is what could be beneficial for people. That's where the insight starts, how we tell our stories."

Risk and responsibility

While enthusiasm for AI runs high, Schwartze is careful about its pitfalls. "I say, 'Don't trust AI' to everyone," he admitted. "You need to be sensitive about the results. Take it as inspiration, but review it."

Bosch's internal tool, BSH AIM, brings large language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini into a secure environment. But Schwartze insists on verification: "People forget to question if it could be correct. Do proofreadings, calculate if it's right. The biggest risk is that we lose, by the wrong use of AI, the reputation - the trust - we have in our brand."

He's seen first-hand how small mistakes can spiral. "Once I typed a prompt wrong - I wanted a person with crossed arms but wrote 'arms like guns'. The image that appeared was… not what I wanted," he laughed. "You need to be precise."

A six-hour success

One of Bosch's first major AI marketing projects came almost by accident. Ahead of the IFA technology fair in Berlin, the communications team asked whether old coffee advertisements from 1920 could be revived. "The process took us six hours, and we had a loopable video animation," Schwartze said. "It turned out to be the second-best performing post on LinkedIn of the year for BSH."

Reproducing that success has proven tricky. "We tried to reproduce it with updated tools, it was not that easy," he admitted. "It was a lucky punch." The challenge now is building "robust processes that bring consistency and authenticity".

Changing roles

Schwartze sees AI as an enabler, not a replacement. "It's more about gaining back capacity by getting rid of redundancy," he said. "There are two kinds of fears with AI: using it the wrong way, and being replaced by it. But the human factor makes things unique."

His designers, he said, "are a very cool community". They explore new tools daily. "For marketeers, it's a little bit different," he added. "Instead of handing over a briefing to an external partner, maybe you could go further by yourself."

Bosch's approach is deliberately hands-on. Staff are given tools, encouraged to experiment, and report back on challenges. "We leave them alone for two weeks," he said. "If they find pitfalls, we help them overcome them. It's not about giving them something ready to use, it's about taking them with us on this journey."

Adobe partnership and custom models

Bosch works closely with Adobe, using Photoshop, Illustrator and Firefly, including custom models for generating recipe images. "Before, we needed six weeks with agencies, food stylists and photographers," Schwartze said. "Now it's close to real time." Yet human expertise remains vital. "We still work with photographers because their feeling about the result is so important," he added. "The images look like artwork."

He values Adobe's stance on ethical AI. "It calms you down knowing we won't have law cases due to the training data," he said. "But sometimes the contextual understanding isn't there. Still, we say: work with the tools we have, and when you can't overcome your challenge, then we talk about how to solve it."

Balancing technology and humanity

Asked if software will eventually outweigh people in marketing budgets, Schwartze paused. "It's a bold question," he said. "I don't hope so. My motivation is to enable people to work with AI, to be prepared for the future." He prefers "shifting capacities towards new fields" rather than cutting jobs. "Stay with your experts," he urged. "They'll do things with AI out of their expertise that were not possible before."

He's also candid about the challenges agencies face. "I'm more afraid about the smaller agencies," he said. "They may not have the time to re-educate themselves. How can we make it fair for everyone? The creative environment around us is at risk due to AI - but when it's gone, you can't bring those people back."

Breaking silos

Within Bosch, Schwartze reports to the Chief Marketing Officer, not IT. "AI has the power to overcome silos," he explained. "It's about new, diverse workflows and trust between departments." His team, based in Munich, connects with global "AI ambassadors" - colleagues replicating his work across regions. "We never break down someone for doing an experiment," he said. "Even if it was a fail, share it. That's the most important thing."

Looking to the future

For Schwartze, the next generation must learn more than just coding. "My son studies AI," he shared proudly. "He's coding diffusion models by himself. But it's not only about technology - it's about the interplay between artificial and human intelligence."

He's both excited and cautious about what's coming. "When I grew up, we had a black and white TV," he said. "My daughter grows up with VR in the house. For her, it's totally normal. What will she see 30 years from now?" He smiled. "Both excitement and fear - that's the future of AI."