This is the one we have the most reason to argue against, so let us be straight with you instead.
Some agencies should be replaced by AI. If the only thing your agency does is push buttons that AI can now push faster, you are right to question the bill. We are not going to pretend otherwise. The agencies that survive the next few years are not the ones that hid behind being busy. They are the ones doing work AI cannot do.
So the real question is not "can AI do what my agency does." It is "what was my agency actually for." Once you answer that honestly, the decision makes itself.
What AI genuinely replaces
Plenty, and it is worth naming it.
AI can write a first draft of an ad. It can sort search terms, flag the obvious waste, summarise a report, and generate variations faster than any person. If your agency's value was producing volume and executing clear instructions, AI has changed the maths on that work, and you should expect to pay less for it or do it yourself.
We are not threatened by this, because we use AI to do exactly that work ourselves. It takes the grind off the table. What it frees up is the part that was always the actual job.
What it does not replace
Judgment. AI will give you an answer to anything you ask. It will not tell you that you asked the wrong question. It does not know your business, your margins, the deal that fell through last quarter, or the reason a campaign that looks fine on paper is quietly costing you. Deciding what to do, in what order, and what to ignore is the work. Producing the thing once you have decided is the easy bit, and that is the bit AI took.
Accountability. AI will happily generate a plan and stake nothing on whether it is correct. When the numbers need to move, someone has to own that. Someone has to make the call, be wrong sometimes, and fix it. You cannot hold software accountable, and accountability is most of what you are buying when you hire people who are good.
Strategy across the whole picture. A good agency is not running your ads in a vacuum. It sees how your ads, your CRM, your follow-up, and your sales process connect, and where the real leak is. AI can optimise the slice you point it at. It will not notice that the problem was never the ads, it was what happened to the lead after the click.
The cost of being confidently wrong. AI is excellent at sounding sure. The higher the stakes, the more that matters, because a confident mistake at scale is expensive and AI does not feel the consequences. A person who owns the outcome does.
The honest test
If you are weighing this up, ask one thing about your agency: are they doing the work, or are they doing the thinking?
If they are just doing the work, the tasks AI now does well, then yes, AI has changed what that is worth and you should act on it. That is a fair conclusion and we would not argue with it.
If they are doing the thinking, the judgment, the strategy, the owning of the result, then AI does not replace them. It makes them faster and sharper, which means you get more from them, not less.
The agencies worth keeping already use AI. They are not competing with it. They are using it to spend more of their time on the part that needed a person all along.
Where that leaves you
The instinct behind the question is a good one. You should not pay for work AI can do. We agree completely, which is why we use AI to do that work and do not charge anyone for the privilege of human button-pushing.
What you should pay for is judgment, accountability, and someone who owns whether your numbers move. That has not gotten cheaper. If anything, in a world where everyone can generate plausible-looking output in seconds, the people who can tell good from plausible, and stand behind it, are worth more than they were.
So do not get rid of your agency because AI exists. Get rid of it if it was only ever doing the work AI now does. Keep it, or find one, that does the thinking. The difference between those two has never been clearer, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you have.
If you want a straight read on where AI fits in your own setup, and where it does not, that is a conversation worth having properly before you make the call.