ChatGPT. Gemini. Perplexity.
If these names cause chills down your spine or aggressive teeth grinding, then you may be a creative mind knee-deep in the AI debate. And the problem doesn’t stop there. AI has seeped into the tools we enjoy.
Photoshop. Elementor. Envato.
The moment you think you’ve escaped, you discover another website or software has added an AI feature.
And then you talk to people who’ve used AI. They get ChatGPT to write content or have Gemini spit out images and social media content for them. Is nothing sacred? Are designers to be the first casualty of the AI revolution?
Hold Your Horses
I’m probably the most wary of technology thanks to I, Robot, but even I was shocked when every illustrator I knew condemned people on social media for using AI. And I get it. I’ve seen writers use AI to create book covers instead of hiring an illustrator. I’ve heard people subscribing to one bot service or another to craft a panel of trained geniuses to help them with their business (that is real and it’s freaky).
In my personal experience, it was like a videogame: it’s interesting for about an hour, then I get bored and move on. Once I knew it didn’t have the imagination to craft one of my book characters, I felt pretty good. But I keep seeing post after mini essay after classy graphic talking about how AI is terrible and it will replace creatives of all fields.
Sitting on the sideline of this wild debate, I wasn’t sure how to feel or what to say. I love outwriting ChatGPT any day of the week, but generative fill in Photoshop makes life easier. What’s the balance?
Perhaps I’m late to the party, but I’d like to present a few thoughts to my fellow creatives that are on the fence, confused, or ready to go to war with AI. If anything, consider this a strategy to learn about the enemy so you can decimate it later.
Idea 1: AI is a Tool, Not a Replacement
After… (what’s it been?) …a year of despising the very mention of ChatGPT, I decided to embrace AI.
Very cautiously.
Technically tools like generative fill in Photoshop use AI to expand an image, but I had something specific in mind for my trial run. Part of my author platform is a newsletter that links to a special webpage just for subscribers. I wanted to visualize my character in a couple shots, crafting a “storybook” with excerpts from my novel. I’d attempted this many times with stock photography and my sad Photoshop skills (and my even sadder drawing skills), so I figured I’d give AI a try.
Shockingly, the world didn’t explode. My heart didn’t turn black (Once Upon a Time reference), and my computer didn’t come to life and eat my fingers. I spent several hours playing with how I described what I wanted, selecting the art style, and collecting several options to choose from.
But these weren’t the final product by any means.
After going through the images to find the ones that matched the closest, I added some elements to make it more like my book. For my author site, I like to do a watercolor treatment to all my images, so I did the same here plus a little extra to make it feel painted on the webpage rather than “here’s an image.” Oh, and I designed, laid out, and built the overall webpage with a ton of other graphics.
The point I’m making is that while I used AI, a solid 99% of the project was all me. Finessing prompts so my AI slave gave me almost exactly what I wanted, editing the final product, and creating everything else was me. AI is a tool we can utilize to make something that wouldn’t work feasible, speed up a process, or fulfill a skill we don’t have. If you have a hammer, use it.
But the hammer isn’t meant for every task.
Moral Dilemma – How Much is Too Much?
When I was in school, plaigarising was the big bad. Do research, include references, but don’t copy/paste the entire Wikipedia article and call it your own. I thought this was an odd thing to harp on. I mean, who does that?
A lot of people. And every day, I hear about another person using ChatGPT to write their paper or some other thing (they really shouldn’t tell me this; I’m a writer and a goodie-two-shoes).
Similar to how you shouldn’t copy/paste someone else’s work and claim it as yours, you shouldn’t copy/paste AI content as is, especially without a notice of some kind. The general public assumes whatever you post or showcase is your personal work for the most part. If you’re gonna use AI, edit the results and let it be an addition, not the main feature.
Another thing is don’t use AI for something you’re actually skilled in. Photography and drawing aren’t my greatest skills, hence why I used AI. But all the copywriting, the layouts, the organization of the webpage. All of the things I prioritize in my field were untouched by AI. We can’t be great at everything, and we might not have a buddy on speed dial. If you’re creating something and need an element you can’t craft, AI can get you in the door so you can edit and finish the whole.
Note that I keep saying “edit.”
You need to decide where you draw the line, but I know for me, I don’t copy/paste. I review the results, make changes, and then add it to my project. AI shouldn’t be more than 5-10% of your piece and definitely shouldn’t be as is.
We lose when we let AI be the creator.
Idea 2: The More You Know, The More You can Stand Out
My brother had to write a paragraph about himself for his graduation card. I was already groaning cause I knew they were gonna ask me to write it. Then my other brother decided we should ask ChatGPT. Utterly offended by the notion and unimpressed with what AI spit out, I wrote my own paragraph. We presented both to the youngest, not telling him which was which.
Mine won.
I don’t mind admitting that I’ve dabbled with ChatGPT because every situation has ended the same. I ask it to write something, read the results, hate the results, and write my own from scratch. This cycle of reviewing AI’s style has given me a sixth sense when reading. Most occasions, I can tell if a written piece was done by AI or a person because of the phrasing and sentence structure.
Writers have a “writing voice,” a style of phrase, word choice, structure, and so on that’s particular to them. Same with designers, photographers, and yes, AI. When you dabble with AI, you learn its voice. The interesting thing is that its voice is more like a hollow thud. Human artistry has vibrance and life, but AI feels like a copy or a compilation of cliches. This knowledge allows you to develop your voice, to differentiate yourself from mediocre. The more you know, the better you can create because you’re doing something AI can’t.
Moral Dilemma – So Many People Use AI Willy-Nilly; Does Being Creative Still Matter?
This question popped into my head when I saw yet another Facebook post of an AI generated image beside a very similar artist creation. AI learns off of people, and that trait is being used to train bots to make suggestions like Gordon Ramsey or Steve Jobs.
Despite all of this, I go back to my brother reading two paragraphs. He’s not a writing major. He avoids AI more than I do. Yet even he decided he preferred my piece to that of AI without knowing which was which. The average person might not realize something is AI, but they know when something is off. As much as we “remove” ourselves from our work, our personality and creativity brings life to the medium we’re working in. That’s something AI can never do.
So yeah, tons of people are using AI willy-nilly. No amount of vengeful comments or informative posts will change that. But your creativity does matter. You being you puts AI to shame and shows the world through action, rather than words, that the creative mind can’t be duplicated or replaced by AI.
It can copy and it can adapt, but it cannot create a one-of-a-kind.
Idea 3: Keep Evolving
I was talking to a designer about websites and he relayed with great enthusiasm how he solved an issue. The site had a timer that needed to be recurring without him manually going in and resetting it. He went to ChatGPT and after a few prompts and what not, it wrote a code to do just that.
Conflicted doesn’t quite describe how I felt. On one hand, ChatGPT. On the other, I wanted a look at that code. HTML is my current fascination and I’m always researching different tags and descriptors to accomplish various tasks. In his situation, I probably would’ve embraced the monotony (I like small updates like that). BUT, if I did seek a solution, I would’ve done the same leg work ChatGPT did to get that answer. Just much slower.
AI has grown in popularity because it feeds our desire for immediacy. Immediate results, immediate satisfaction. Now, now, now. However, looking at it as a tool, we can use the results we gain to learn and grow. That HTML code my friend got from ChatGPT already existed. By dissecting the code, he’d understand why it works as well as other ways it can be used or how to fix it if ChatGPT got something wrong.
We should learn from what AI spits out.
Moral Dilemma – Where’s the Line Between Me and the Machine?
My mom’s been applying for jobs in the EdTech industry, and she wrote a statement that beautifully encapsulates something we’ve lost. She wrote that her focus in teaching is showing kids why math works so they can understand how to apply it.
As a tutor, she sees kids applying formulas without knowing what each variable means and why the formula provides the results that it does. The formula works until the numbers change, the scenario shifts, or some other factor dumps more ambiguous letters into your word problem.
If you don’t understand why, you can’t properly apply what’s being provided.
This is the difference between a regular person having fun with AI and a creative using it as a tool to improve their craft. You don’t just copy/paste; you edit and learn from what’s created. If it’s code, research the tags and functions. If it’s copywriting, figure out how AI condensed your notes or summarized a speech. It’s those extra minutes of critical thinking that help you improve so you don’t need AI next time around.
Final Thoughts: Settle Down on the AI Debate
Once it becomes sentient, then we can go full I, Robot guns blazing. Some EMPs wouldn’t hurt either.
I’m only semi-joking, but I was reminded recently that AI, as of now, isn’t truly “AI” because it can’t have original thought. ChatGPT, Gemini, and all the others are based on our work. It can’t create new things, just copy and reorganize. And in many ways, the quality of what it creates severely lacks in comparison to a human being.
So calm down.
No one’s getting replaced by AI. And if you are, then the people who thought they were so smart are gonna learn quick that they made a mistake. There is a distinction between AI and man, and while the general public might not fully recognize it, they are discovering the difference and seeking reality rather than augmentation. I know I’ve seen the shift and I honestly love it.
AI is a tool to be used, and when used properly, it gives you another level of creativity and innovation. Hopefully this gives you some things to think about, some encouragement in these crazy times, or questions to ask yourself in regards to how you conduct your art.
