Is AI Replacing Human Creativity?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made significant advancements in recent years and has the potential to revolutionize creative industries. On one hand, AI can automate time-consuming tasks and provide new avenues for creativity. On the other hand, there are concerns about AI replacing human jobs and affecting the authenticity of the creative process. Whether you're a creative professional or just interested in the future of AI, this post will provide a balanced look at the impact of AI in the world of creativity.
Before we dive into the impact of AI, though, let’s take another look at that opening paragraph. It seems fine at first glance — it’s organized, easy to read, and grammatically correct. The weird part is that it wasn’t written by a human. It was generated by ChatGPT, an AI text bot, with a simple written prompt to guide it (by the way, our editor had changes to the opening paragraph, but struck them when she read the second paragraph). When commanded to produce an opening paragraph for a blog post about the pros and cons of AI in creative fields, that’s what it produced. CSU Global’s How Does AI Actually Work? breaks down the process: “AI systems work by combining large sets of data with intelligent, iterative processing algorithms to learn from patterns and features in the data that they analyze.” However, if you’re anything like us, you’re probably more interested in how AI tech is influencing creative industries.
Our first interaction with AI was back when we supported the launch of Netflix by Bots: Valentine’s Day, but the technology has evolved significantly since then. Today, we occasionally use AI tools to upscale old, low res photos, repair damage to or remove unwanted objects from photos, and even scale and sharpen footage to 4k, 8k, and beyond. But the tech is capable of much more. We talked to someone who has lots of experience with it — Fabian Tejada, motion graphics designer and founder of De Los Angeles Studio. “It’s a tool that I can’t see myself not using anymore now that I’ve used it,” he admitted. Fabian collaborated with Bard Tales owner and producer Chad Horn this past political ad season and utilized AI heavily in his work. “I was definitely using a lot of Dall-E, which is an AI text to image generator,” he explained. “It helped me very quickly prototype backgrounds, and prototype different heads on suits and change the clothing of different characters.” AI can even perform functions that previously crucial programs like Photoshop have been necessary for, cutting the time that goes into that process down significantly. Fabian explained, “it could take [a photo editor] eight hours to do the four images that Dall-E spit out in 30 seconds.” This automation appears irreplaceable for creatives who want to save hours in their day. But, there are negative aspects to consider.
One of the biggest questions about AI, especially in creative fields, is how ethical the relatively new technology is. With the rise in popularity of easily accessible AI image generators like Dall-E came the rise in artists speaking out on the subject; German artist Jonas Jödicke authored a viral Twitter thread listing the cons of AI art. Those cons included lack of consent from artists that AI is pulling information from, the encouragement of art theft, and the possibility of automation replacing human creativity. The thread includes examples and screenshots of artists who have faced these realities due to AI popularity, so the fears aren’t unfounded. And, as AI gets smarter, creatives who make their livelihood through their art could see their clients dwindle when their carefully crafted skills can be easily — cheaply — automated.
Traditional artists have a long history of being wary of technology that could undermine their craft, so the pushback is expected; photography and digital art tools were both once seen as the enemy at their conception. At Bard Tales, we’re not afraid to try out the latest in video production technology (we’re big fans of virtual reality). When it comes to AI, however, we’re not convinced that it can always make the end product better. Unlike human creativity, AI is constrained to what it can identify as useful data. We’ll be watching AI as the technology continues to evolve, but we don’t expect the controversies around its ethics and copyright issues to die out anytime soon. We like what Fabian had to say about this one: “I'm sure that once Disney gets a hold of this… they have enough money and leverage to be able to just kind of square it away.”
