Most A.I. has no place in the creative industry
As a creative dude myself, I can say we creatives are sensitive folk. Sometimes we put our heart and soul into a project. We lose ourselves in details. We are an optimistic bunch that always think we can create a solution somehow. You know, romantics.
So I guess that's why I really value originality. I don’t mind something that might look and feel janky or botchy, as long as the idea and concept are really genuine and in some way original.
I love an improvised solution more than the actually perfected and overly produced version. I love the new words people make up to give new meaning to things.
I love how when something is made, you just know that someone spent a lot of time actually making the thing. The process of making the thing is sometimes even more beautiful than the end result itself. You value that someone had some mindful weeks just painting, drawing, coding, writing, or puzzling; you just value that they had a great time.
But more importantly, I love it when being creative is about expressing human virtues. Hell, creativity and the act of it is a very important virtue of being a human being.
I love it when students find out these virtues and talents by themselves.
And I love speaking, researching, and understanding lots of different folk about what drives them and how we can solve problems together. Exploring different perspectives as a teacher for a bachelor's degree with lots of international students allows us to see ways of thinking across cultures. It feels like we are building together, exploring what the hell we are doing on this planet, and most of the time, how we can have fun.
For the most part, I’ve seen generative A.I. not add to that at all. Honestly, it's been making things worse. I’ve seen bloated texts, crappy logos, vibe-coded bloatware, impossible videos, and music without any story or soul.
Even for brainstorming, researching, summarizing, or writing text when I have conversations with my students, we both quickly realize that maybe this should be written and understood by a human being. Because now, it’s an empty shell, and the creative process and the teachings of that process are lost.
In all fairness, some machine learning is great, and some generated code really makes me work faster. But in the grand scheme of things, I see no real value for most generative tools.
The main reason being: it just adds noise to a process that is difficult enough as it is. Especially in the creative context where I am a part of a design school, learning something new, being vulnerable, putting the time in, and discovering what you like doing is the goal. I think this environment should reduce the noise, so that's what I’ll try to do for my students. Avoiding these "tools" is going to be part of my strategy.