There is no doubt that generative AI is having an increasingly significant impact on the creative process. From writing to art, music and video, generative AI helps creatives do more in less time. But is there a point at which outsourcing the creative process becomes detrimental to future creativity and the quality of one's work? I believe so.
I'm always eager to improve both the quality of my work and the efficiency with which I create it. I use AI to help structure and review content, focusing on improving clarity. I sparingly use it for visual work, and even then, only for more abstract images.
However, generative AI can do much more. By combining a few creative agents backed by powerful generative AI models, it’s possible to build a system that can research, write, revise and publish creative works based on a short brief. Just recently, I read about someone who had developed an agentic system to create and publish a presentation. The system is capable of generating slides with speaker notes, technical diagrams and speaker with AI-generated narration. This is both impressive and concerning. While it allows for rapid content creation, it distances us too much from the creative process, ultimately leading to lower-quality results. Furthermore, I believe it has the potential to erode our ability to maintain and refine our creative skills over time.
On one hand, using such tools enables us to produce content at an unprecedented rate. On the other, it may lack quality, specificity and the creator’s unique voice.
So what should we do? Do we embrace this technology fully, or rigidly stick to our old processes and workflows? I'm a strong advocate for mindful use of technology. We must understand both how it helps us now and what we risk losing by adopting it. I believe that outsourcing too much of the creative process leads to mediocre work — indistinguishable from the growing mass of AI-generated content. A better, more sustainable approach is to delegate only the parts of the creative process that don’t matter and have been commoditised, while focusing on what truly differentiates you and your final work.
It’s also valuable to occasionally practise the creative skills that AI is rapidly taking over, as they will atrophy over time if neglected. We never want generative AI to become a crutch.
