Every now and then, an impossible idea walks into the room.This one wore a cardigan and a gold chain.

We were pitching Visit Pittsburgh. The brief was simple enough: show how the city has evolved without losing what makes it special. But Pittsburgh isn’t just a place. It’s a mood. A contradiction. A steel-town heart with a creative pulse.

So we asked the question that made everyone in the room pause for a second:

What would it sound like if Mr. Rogers and Wiz Khalifa made a song together about their city?

It shouldn’t work. But the best ideas rarely do.

On one side, you have Mr. Rogers — empathy, warmth, nostalgia. On the other, Wiz Khalifa — swagger, smoke, and a modern beat. They represent two completely different versions of the same place. But together, they capture exactly what Pittsburgh feels like right now.

The challenge was simple: how do you make that duet believable when one half of it doesn’t exist anymore?

That’s where AI became useful. Not as a gimmick, but as a way to explore at a speed we couldn’t have before.

We started with ChatGPT to rough out lyrics. It helped us find a rhythm between Rogers’ optimism and Wiz’s flow. Some lines were cheesy, some sharp, but it kept the idea alive. Then we used Midjourney to explore tone and texture — what it might look like if you merged a cardigan and a chain. Kling came in last to help with motion and emotion, shaping the feeling of the piece instead of just the visuals.

The output wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t the point. It gave form to something that had only existed in our heads a few days earlier. It made the idea real enough to pitch.

AI didn’t make the song. It made the song possible.

That difference matters. The tools didn’t come up with the idea. They removed the friction between thought and execution. A few years ago, this concept would have died in a brainstorm — too ambitious, too weird, too expensive. But now we could show it, not just describe it. And somewhere between the cardigan and the chain, Pittsburgh found its voice.

The more I use AI, the more I realize creativity isn’t about control. It’s about permission.

Permission to explore. To fail faster. To connect things that shouldn’t connect.

AI doesn’t make me more efficient. It makes me more curious.

Sometimes the most human ideas need a machine to make them believable.

And sometimes, the ones that shouldn’t work are the ones that remind you why you do this in the first place.