A(I) creative friend or foe?
“It’s taking over the world!”. “It’s stealing our jobs!” … Ok, if we hold back on the hellish visions of incinerated robot-run landscapes for a minute (although don’t get me wrong, I love a good apocalypse plotline) how does AI actually affect our day-to-day life in the creative industry? Is it really so scary? And is it possible to work alongside or even admire the ‘bad’ bots?
As you might expect, most responses I got when sending out questions about AI to my Purple peers, went something like ‘erm, that’s a very big question’. And they’re not wrong. It is a big question (probably too big for a one-off blog!) but I wanted to find out the overall attitude to machine learning and the paradox it’s presenting in the creative world right now.
It’s pretty obvious that AI is threatening skilled professionals across all industries via task automation. In fact, 75% of global marketing and creative leaders agree that AI is an essential part of their creative tool set.
- Repetitive tasks
- Speed and efficiency
- Data analysis
- Uniformity
- Understanding technical complexities
However, it’s important to separate creative thinking from creative doing. As a writer, I use AI in a minor way – there’s no denying ChatGPT or Perplexity comes in handy occasionally for questions, synonyms or rhymes, but when it comes to the art of creative writing and problem-solving, it’s not a go-to.
Humans have an emotional agility no bot can have. We impart empathy into our work and can adapt it based on even the most subtle feedback. In essence, there’s a difference between the increasing effect of AI’s tech efficiency on the industry compared to natural human creativity.
Then there’s the argument that technology has long been at the heart of the graphic design world anyway – and AI is just the next logical and essential step.
It’s hard to now imagine a time when design was all done by hand, but it wasn’t that long ago! I’m talking BP (before Photoshop). I’m talking pens and pencils. I’m talking Stanley knives. I hope that artform never fully fizzles out completely, but it’s undeniable that digital technology has transformed the industry to be less… hands-on, shall we say.
In this sense, AI has become an intelligent companion that vibes with your creative frequency and isn’t just a set of rigid design support apparatus.
As I speak to clients, colleagues and friends, the subject of AI often comes back to human creativity and how does AI fit into that definition. The frequent answer is, “AI can’t replace true human creativity” or “what does this mean for creatives?”. The implication is that there’s a unique quality and existential reality that AI can’t (or shouldn’t) replace.
Notice the last word of that sentence – replace. Change and innovation are usually first seen as a replacement of something. But as time goes by and the innovation becomes more commonplace and bedded in, society shifts to a more nuanced view of the technology.
Spoiler alert – whether you like it or not, AI tools are already in use by a whopping 83% of creatives.
I think ultimately AI will be a creative acquaintance rather than friend or foe. Like computers, its efficiency will be something that will increase the pace of projects and the expectations of clients.
I do think it'll thin the creative industry a bit, and I worry about future graduate copywriters looking to come into the creative world, but I remain hopeful. It certainly won't be putting everyone out of work in the same way people thought films would kill books or photography would kill portraiture!
And who knows, it may even create jobs we haven’t even thought of yet? AI Prompter, anyone?
By Mackenzie Duley