It's 2024, and news headlines are prophesying artificial intelligence as both the utopia of productivity and the doom of obsolescence. Let’s save ourselves from succumbing to overwhelm in the face of these relentless updates, product launches, and new technologies and instead focus on the principles that will level up our current work and equip us for a future where tech change is not only assumed, it’s our happy place.
As British writer Vivian Greene once said: "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
Start with: How can AI help me do what I do now better?
The fundamental principle of leveraging AI in the creative process starts with the understanding that technology, at its core, is a tool designed to enhance and extend our capabilities. It's about using AI to do more of what we already excel at: optimizing our efficiency and deepening our creative output.
AI's role is to augment human creativity and productivity, providing tools that can take over repetitive tasks, analyze complex data, and offer insights. This partnership allows us to focus on higher-level tasks that require human intuition, emotional intelligence, and creative thinking.
Platforms like ChatGPT can be used as a search engine on steroids, providing a more interactive, responsive, and tailored information-gathering experience. This difference is like having a conversation with an expert rather than sifting through pages of search results.
An example: I direct a lot of sports training spots, and I like to learn about sport-specific drills. With ChatGPT, I dig into this subject with a nerd-like specificity. “Give me ten plyometric exercises that a speed skater uses to prepare for the Olympics.” This really helps add density to a sports script.
I have been creating work — both film and writing, for many years, so I have a large body of material that directly reflects my passions and interests — all of this can now be training data for machine learning. Big companies have been doing this for years. Now you can as well. Gather your own rich repository of emotional intelligence, creative impulses, and experiential knowledge, and feed the machine. By doing so, you mold the AI to reflect your 'taste' and perspective, creating a bespoke tool that resonates with your individual style and approach.
In this partnership, the AI becomes a tool that not only understands your artistic language but also contributes to it, echoing the adage, "In the artist’s hand, the brush whispered secrets to the canvas." Here, the AI is the brush, a tool that, when mentored effectively, can reveal hidden facets of your creativity and help you express them in your work.
Our work must be transformative, offering a novel insight that leaves a lasting impression. This is our primary objective — and it’s achieved through lived experiences. Use our time away from the computer to develop the core idea in our work.
In an era increasingly intertwined with AI, the role of human emotion in creative works becomes not just significant but indispensable. The act of transferring human emotion transcends mere storytelling or idea presentation. It involves conveying the essence of experience – an intangible insight – that forms a profound connection between the creator and the audience.
This emotional transfer is the soul of art, enabling it to resonate deeply and forge connections that surpass the barriers of time, space, and culture.
While AI has made significant strides in mimicking human-created patterns, it fundamentally lacks the capacity to feel and, consequently, to authentically transfer emotion. It operates within the realm of learned algorithms, unable to generate the raw, unscripted emotions that stem from human experiences.
The true depth of creativity lies in the spectrum of emotions born from human experiences – the joys, sorrows, and myriad feelings that life brings. This richness of human emotion is the realm where AI finds its limitation. AI can assist, enhance, and even interpret human emotions in art, but the core, the genesis of these emotions, remains uniquely human.
This distinction underscores the irreplaceable value of human touch in creative endeavors, where AI serves as a tool, but the heart of the creative process remains inherently our responsibility.
The profound potential of AI in the realm of creativity is most evident in its ability to facilitate and enhance "creative flow" — a state of deep, immersive creativity that is highly sought after by artists. AI's role in absorbing mundane and disruptive tasks is pivotal, as it clears the way for a more focused and undisturbed creative process.
By handling these routine aspects, AI allows artists to dedicate their full attention and energy to the core of their creative work. Additionally, AI can act as a unique source of inspiration and an insightful collaborator. It can offer novel perspectives and ideas that might not be immediately apparent, extending the artist's reach and empowering their creative expression.
This principle of finding flow with the help of AI is centered around making us more effective in our creative endeavors. The process is iterative: we start by using AI to gather information and generate ideas, and then we distill these insights to align with our creative vision. This is followed by a critical evaluation of how these AI-driven insights mesh with our own intuition and creative goals.
Finally, we bolster our creative intuition with persuasive and well-researched information provided by AI. This iterative cycle fosters a deeper engagement with our work, enabling us to refine our artistry continually.
In essence, AI in the creative process is not about replacing human intuition and emotion but about complementing and enhancing it. It's a tool that, when used effectively, can significantly augment our ability to remain in a state of creative flow, leading to more profound, inspired, and impactful work.
This synergy between human creativity and AI opens up new possibilities for artistic expression and innovation, making the creative process more fluid, dynamic, and enriching.