As a creative person, I think a lot about the impact of AI on my work. If it’s possible to create something by giving a chatbot a text prompt, what does it even mean to be creative?

An AI is trained on the average

To produce a result, an AI has to be trained. AI is currently trained mostly on large datasets of text, images, videos, and audio. While it’s possible for an AI to generate many different results, it will always draw from the same source — a source that will always have its limitations.

When I create something, I am my own dataset. I draw from my own source. That also has limitations — I haven’t seen or heard everything — but what I have taken in makes me unique. Things like:

• A Mondrian painting that inspired me to combine watercolour with fineliner
• The sound the electric rental car made when it started up, which sent me deep down a synth drone rabbit hole
• The argument my son had at a French campsite that I turned into a short story.

This makes what I create unique. And that’s true for everyone. That’s not to say AI can’t eventually imitate, but that’s different from coming up with something genuinely new from within yourself. That’s why, in my view, creativity remains a valuable skill.

But that also demands an adjustment from me as a creative. I need to infuse what I make with my own experiences — to show that the text, the drawing, or the song couldn’t have been generated by an AI.

AI shows where the opportunities lie

Because an AI is trained on a limited dataset, it’s actually interesting as a creative to look at where the opportunities are. Once you start recognising the limitations of the dataset, you can make things that fall outside those boundaries. That gives you work that does something new and stands out. These new works can eventually be absorbed back into the dataset, so as a creative you need to keep developing.

This idea isn’t new. Artists have always pushed boundaries. Take Pablo Picasso, who had a classical training and for that very reason was able to do something radically different. It’s a beautiful thought that as a creative I can have my own voice while we’re flooded by a sea of mediocrity.

People are starting to recognise (and despise) AI slop

That sea of mediocrity is also known as AI slop. It reminds me of the old days when people suddenly had access to making PowerPoint presentations with clip art and all the slides started looking the same. We’re now seeing the same thing happen with AI output.

I keep seeing the same kinds of posters appearing for event announcements, and it’s immediately obvious they were AI-generated. That instantly takes away any value for me. Fine if someone with a tight budget uses it to quickly throw something together — but that’s also the value I attach to it. I have infinitely more respect for someone who spends a few hours messing around with markers, paint, and cut-and-paste work and cobbles together something truly unique.

And I’m not the only one starting to notice this. People are getting worn out by websites that all look alike and, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, want to see the human hand again.

““In an era of AI-generated-everything, AI-fatigued users want designs that look like they were made by a person.”

— Megan Chan, Nielsen Norman Group”

Making things with AI is not satisfying

This ties into my previous point. Because it’s so easy to have AI create something, I don’t get enough satisfaction from it. It feels like I’ve made a disposable product. Something inconsequential.

I notice it in my day-to-day work as a Design System Lead too. There, I have AI develop prototypes based on a Design System. It works really well — my output is four times what it used to be — but it feels less satisfying. Before, I’d spend a whole day grinding away to get a page live in a prototype. There was a lot of tweaking, trying, failing, frustration, and starting over. But at the end of the day, I was proud. I sometimes miss that now.

AI can support creativity

I absolutely don’t want to argue that all AI is bad and that I never use it. AI can be a great tool for supporting creative work. It can take over certain tasks — mainly the tedious and repetitive ones that sometimes come with making things. But I’m always careful not to let the AI influence the creative process too much.

A good example is writing stories. I used to have an AI check my texts for passages where I was ‘showing not telling’. This led me to change things that perhaps didn’t need changing, because I was leaning too heavily on the AI’s analytical eye. It took away a sense of feeling. On top of that, my creative instinct got muddied by the chatbot’s offhand remarks. I was being praised between the lines for my beautiful writing, even though I’d never asked for that. And because of it, I became less critical myself.

Now I’ve set up the AI so it only corrects spelling and grammar, and otherwise keeps its opinions to itself.

The model defines the boundaries

And Big Tech supplies the models. Because they decide what the model is trained on. Among others, Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic set the rules. What’s allowed and what isn’t? Using AI as a replacement for creativity means we keep operating within these boundaries. We make ourselves servants to the thinking of the already far-too-powerful tech companies from America. While now, more than ever, is the time to break away from Big Tech.

You can also train your own AI, but that’s difficult and not accessible to everyone — it requires a massive investment.

Why creativity remains important

To close, I want to highlight with these two quotes why I think it’s important to stay creatively active:

““In the twenty-first century, fiction might thus be the most powerful force on earth, even stronger than unpredictable asteroids and natural selection. If we want to understand our future, it’s not enough to crack genes and crunch numbers — we also need to decipher the stories that give meaning to the world.”

— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus”

Harari argues in Homo Deus that we should keep making stories, and in my view that can’t happen in the vacuum of an AI model.

““The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

— Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind”

Around me I often hear that you need to use AI or you’ll be left behind. Pink argues that the future belongs to the creatives, and I find that a much more beautiful thought.