Cracking the Creative Code
Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, has come a long way since its inception. Many people joked and theorized that if it developed too far, machines and computers would take over the world. Thankfully, we don’t have any digitized overlords. Computation has gotten easier. Robotics have made certain jobs safer. AI has certainly become beneficial.
However, there is one line AI has crossed that grinds my gears in the worst possible way: Art.
Some friends and I had started a Star Wars RPG where all of our characters were Mandolorians. We found reference pictures online to help us get an idea of what our characters looked like, and we’ve had a ball flying through the air and blowing stuff up. After a few months of this, one of the guys showed us an AI-generated picture of his character. It was a beautiful illustration, but I felt a twinge of unease. I know people who’ve taken weeks to draw and paint pictures like that, and this program had created it in minutes, albeit after a few failed keywords. It felt like cheating. AI has entered the Creative Sector, and it has no business being there.
As a teacher, I’ve already grown concerned about auto-writing programs like ChatGPT. College essays took me weeks of research and drafting to complete. Now, students can plug in certain words and content goals for AI to auto-generate a twenty-page essay. My Publication class students could use it for their creative writing prompts. My Film class students could use programs like Adobe Express to artificially create their movies instead of going out to film them themselves. Even blog posts like this one could be AI-generated in a pinch, but I refuse to. I made a commitment to make these once a month, and I intend to keep it.
Now, I’m not against finding ways of making things easier, but like I said earlier: this feels like cheating. Cheating my students out of a genuine learning experience. Cheating my readers out of genuine reflections. Cheating myself out of genuine creativity.
The same can be said about my stories. I’ve heard of people using AI to generate DnD campaign ideas in a pinch. While this can work for mini adventures in a tabletop game, using it for full blown novels and scripts sickens me. I’ve spent years polishing the stories in my head and improving my writing skills to better convey them. Using AI to generate a novel feels like a slap to the face.
“Oh, but I don’t feel confident in my own writing,” some readers may say. “I can’t get my story out on my own!”
Well, like in any case where you can’t do something on your own, you ask for help. Can’t fix your toilet? Call a plumber. Can’t draw pictures? Call an illustrator or graphic designer. We have a similar occupation in the writing world: Ghost Writers. These talented individuals will work with you to write the story you’ve dreamed of, and you still get authorship credit. Will this cost money? Absolutely. However, if you won’t take the time to learn a skill needed for your desired ambition, you’ll need to hire someone else to do it for you.
I am far from the only person feeling the hurt of AI’s transgression in the world of Art. For the last few months, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors’ Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) have been on strike. Terrible pay and outdated contracts have led them to putting their collective foot down and telling producers that enough is enough. Producers have claimed they can “wait them out,” but pretty soon, their backlogged content releases will run out, and they’ll have nothing new to put on their showtimes.
AI has been a notable factor in these strikes. Writers were already struggling to meet producer demands, often staying up late in writing rooms to craft the script for an episode. Now, AI programs could theoretically be used to generate entire scripts with little to no human input. Actors aren’t safe, either. An AI proposal had been made shortly before the strikes happened that infuriated many people. Apparently, the idea was to use AI to create an image-capture of a background actor’s likeness, pay that background actor for a single day’s worth of work, and the production company could use their likeness…indefinitely. I’ve heard of penny-pinching, but this is straight up robbery.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, you may have noticed that much of this tirade has sounded like I’m claiming AI is taking jobs away. It’s a message we’ve heard before, from factory workers to cashiers. However, let me be clear: this isn’t a matter of jobs being stolen. It’s much greater than that. AI is robbing us of creative joy.
Allow me to reference John Keating (played by Robin Williams) from Dead Poet Society (written by Tom Schulman). Mr. Keating was an English professor at an all-boys school, and in his endeavor to instill a love of poetry into his students’ hearts, he gave us this gem:
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love; these are what we stay alive for.”
To take it a step further, Creativity is our strongest connection to the Divine. In almost every religion, history and mythology begin with creation, of the mountains, the seas, and of mankind. I represent Christianity in this regard, but even for us, the first sentence in the Bible reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Every time He created something, He saw that it was good.
There’s an interesting concept in Biblical studies called “The Rule of First Mention.” Basically, the first time something is mentioned in Scripture, it defines the rest of the times it’s mentioned. In this case, we need to look at the words “filled with the Spirit of God.” Most of us would think about David slaying Goliath, or the disciples speaking in tongues at Pentecost, or even when God breathed life into Adam.
However, the first time we see someone “filled with the Spirit of God” is in the book of Exodus. God was giving Moses instructions on how the Tabernacle, His mobile sanctuary, was to be constructed and what items needed to be put into it. If you’re thinking Moses was the one filled with God’s Spirit, you’d be wrong again. In Exodus 31, a man named Bezalel is the first person described as “filled with the Spirit of God.” What was special about Bezalel?
He was a craftsman, an artisan who could create numerous things and had a multitude of apprentices he could instruct. God filled Bezalel with His Spirit so he could create everything needed for the Tabernacle, and everything he put his hands to produced came out beautifully.
Creativity is coded deep within us. It separates us from the rest of Earth’s creatures. Animals may be able to react to art and music, but they can’t create nor understand it to the level that we can. AI may be a helpful tool, but it has no business being the sole generator of Creativity. Creativity brings light into our lives and draws us closer to the Divine. We cannot and must not let AI steal this away from us.