What is AI?
First off let’s just clarify what we mean when we talk about AI in this particular context – we are not discussing some super artificial intelligence, that AI currently being deployed anywhere and everywhere are language learning models (LLM’s) and they work by feeding off human-made data they access from the web. Nothing is sacred, they crawl the web, scraping data whenever they come across it. They are basically prediction machines, completing a sequence with the most likely answer – learn more here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-ai-works/

So the AI we commonly see being integrated into offices and workplaces is basically a pattern recognition tool, whether that be a piece of music, a video clip, writing or an image – the user inputs a prompt and the AI gives its best/most likely answer. As the technology improves so does the output and it’s definitely getting harder to spot the difference between human-made and AI. But how does this impact creativity? Proponents for the technology say it allows them to be creative by being able to bring their ideas to life. I would argue that has always been the case – just pick up a pencil and draw, an instrument and play or a pen and write- what’s stopping you? The problem is that we want everything at the touch of a button, people don’t want to wait and learn or spend money on employees when they can get a machine to do the job in half the time.

What Can Generative AI Help With?

• Struggling for ideas for new content? LLM’s can give you fresh ideas to help when you’ve got writers block. Remember, it’s all about the ‘prompt’ – be as clear as possible with your wording to gain optimum results!
• Need some design inspiration? AI can help users explore different ideas when trying to come up with a concept or design – take care that the outputs are not infringing on any trademarks or copyright.
• Utilise AI as more of a tool to help enhance our thinking, rather than using to as an alternative to actual human creativity.
• Speed up mundane tasks that would take a person a large amount of time to complete – typical case uses include 3D Visualisers who need to make changes to scenes and environments but don’t have the time needed to complete the tasks by themselves. "I wouldn't have been able to complete this task on time without the help of AI…clients put unrealistic timescales on jobs because they think AI can speed EVERYTHING up.”

Why You Should Use Caution When using AI
Your customers have chosen your brand because they have forged a relationship built on trust – when you start to use generative AI to write content and create images you are risking breaking that trust if you are not diligent. It’s imperative that you carefully proof all content before you post it – the software you use produces images and text derived from a massive pool from the web and even if you feed it your own data there is still a risk it will mislead or hallucinate. We see badly thought out content rushed out all the time, often as a result of using generative AI l – this Christmas ad recently made the news : https://archive.ph/USngO

Copyright issues aside (well, the big tech companies seem to think they don’t apply to them anyway) there are other issues that arise when we use AI for creating imagery, text and music. Is it really creative to type a prompt into a machine for it to spit out an image or piece of music which is basically just a bit of a rehash of preexisting works that the AI has been trained on? Personally, I don’t think so, although I know many people who find LLM’s really helpful at drafting pieces of writing or coming up with ideas for art and design. On hearing that people are using AI to write emails or letters I was pretty baffled – is it really that hard to write a sincere email or letter? I understand that life is hectic and that we are constantly looking for ways to save time, especially on mundane tasks.

The thing is, for most creatives, their jobs are far from mundane and AI is solving a problem that was never there. In the past we dreamed of a future where robots would do the boring stuff like cleaning or ironing, or the less popular jobs like refuse collection. We were promised a utopia where we could live out our lives creating art and music but it seems the opposite is being shoved down our throats. Instead of fostering a lifelong love of learning and creating we are watching as the world becomes reliant on technology to do the thinking and creating for us. We are getting to a point where homework is being completed by AI and university degrees are accomplished because of ChatGPT – a dumbing down of the population. That sounds pretty scary to me!

Written by Louise Lockhart Digital Sorceress & Global Head of Crayons at Creative Remedy.

You can’t have failed to have noticed the buzz surrounding the recent launch of ChatGPT. Initial excitement may have waned a little but with version 4 recently made available to paying subscribers, it is certainly making its mark. Its release took the world by storm as us mere humans watched in awe as the AI spat out written content based on carefully constructed prompts.

First thoughts for those who rely on creative jobs in order to earn a living may well have been ones of dread and fear, afterall, if AI can write content or produce images in a fraction of the time it takes a human, is there any need for the human to have this job at all?

It’s a complex question and the answer will no doubt change as time goes on and AI becomes even more intelligent. But, for now at least, although AI is absolutely a tool that can aid the creative processes of many jobs it is a tool that still requires the human touch.

Using AI For Content Creation
Struggling for ideas for content creation? It can be hard to be able to keep up with the constant need to post content and AI is a great tool to help when you’ve got writer's block. Just one prompt can yield multiple ideas for content, saving you valuable time and allowing you to get on with the writing/creating part.

With design and art, AI can create ideas you might not have thought of. Instead of seeing AI as a way of producing the finished piece, it could become more a part of the ideas process, speeding up the initial ‘thinking’ part before you execute the final design.
AI is a great tool that is advancing at great speed. But we need to be sure what we are posting or creating is safe and legal.

Plagiarism
One obvious yet often ignored problem with using AI for content creation is the risk of plagiarism. If you ask a chat bot to write you a blog it will scrape content from multiple sources and will not provide citation. If you choose to write content in this way you run the risk of plagiarising published work.

Misinformation
Because AI doesn't provide evidence or citations you have no way of knowing if what it has written is actually true. We are all painfully aware of the dangers of misinformation so to avoid posting false information it is very important to check anything written using AI.

Content creation is a huge part of a brand’s identity. In order to build a loyal customer base, brands rely on having a unique voice and message that conveys their brand ethos. If this voice isn’t consistent or the messages don’t match the brand values then customers will lose trust.

In order for AI to produce unique content it needs to be told how to do it. No matter how good AI is it still needs to be trained to be able to write in the unique voice of an individual business. For small businesses in particular, that unique voice and message is what will set you apart from your competitors.
When creating content and designs for your business you need to ensure you are delivering:

• Personal touch
• Unique voice/message
• Stand out from competitors/big brands
  
  

This will help protect your brand and ensure your customers continue to put their trust in you and your business.

AI for Design
There has been a lot of backlash from artists and creators surrounding the training of the technology, as it scrapes images from the internet and mashes them together to answer the prompts. Artists rightly protest their work being used without consent or credit.

As well as potentially infringing copyrighted work there is also no way to copyright any work produced by AI- so even if it produces something you want to use as a logo for example, there would be nothing to stop anyone else using the same image for their logo.

Adobe’s hotly anticipated release of Firefly may answer some of those concerns as they have trained their technology on Adobe stock images, openly licensed content and public domain content where copyright has expired. In a bid to help creators produce great designs regardless of their skill levels, Adobe’s Firefly could be a tool that allows users to improve their working practices. It has to be noted that it is not currently possible to opt-out of data set training for content submitted to Stock, although Adobe do say they are looking at ways to make this a possibility in the future.

Personally, I’m a little worried that AI will make it harder to tell what is fact and what is misinformation eg. when doing web searches or reading ‘news’ on social media platforms.

AI is constantly evolving and is definitely here to stay, but for now, is it best used as a tool to help optimise our workflow to avoid running the risk of producing soulless and generic creative work.   And, if content is wholly written by AI do you think it should be credited as such so that readers can verify its accuracy?

Written by Louise Lockhart at Creative Remedy