Creative Pros vs Artificial Intelligence

The general debate tries to paint the fight between artists and AI as a good versus evil issue. There is more nuance than that.

THE BLUE CORNER: Artificial intelligence is quickly getting better than humans at industrialized creativity. It analyzes trends, learns how to replicate it and... boom! There you have it. A song, a film, a video entirely created by a silicon being. So sad and scary to see creativity, the epitome of our perceived humanity, be so nonchalantly highjacked by these artificial barbarians.

THE RED CORNER: On the other hand, AI is allowing creative professionals to take their core skills and expand into other areas too. Letting them regain control over the entire creative process, Renaissance-style. I've spent the last few weeks observing illustrators and photographers making rudimentary videos at home then asking AI to turn these videos into sophisticated motion sequences based on their own photos and drawings—and it was mesmerizing. I've seen architects magically turn scribbles into digital dioramas with jaw dropping cinematography, just because their apps finally learned to understand them better. And watched costume designers revealing themselves to be incredible photographers that never had time to learn the camera tricks, but since they know how to describe what they want, they are finally being able to get there.

If through the lens of one side we may be killing jobs and losing the power of creative collaborations, on the other we may be bringing back the mindset of old-school artists who mastered the tools to get their entire vision to life.

Some look at all the current world, with AI invading every creative field, and see doom. My cautiously optimistic eyes tend to focus more on the potential revolution of illustrators directing their own movies, actors generating their art with less permission from others, musicians generating visuals after their songs...

Yes, there are landmines along the way—some we haven't even noticed yet—but the potential of de-HenriFording creativity is fascinating too. Maybe, just consider, breaking the creative process in infinite specialized steps may have been the most un-artistic idea we have ever had.

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