During college, while pursuing a degree in advertising and public relations, I came to a crossroads: I could continue following the path of advertising, or I could take the route of graphic design.
I chose advertising because I was dead-set against the idea of using computers to create graphics. I wanted to use my hands, my creativity and my skill.
It’s kind of embarrassing now to think I was so resistant to computers having a place in an artist’s world, especially when, at every turn, we now see Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing work that was once created by humans.
After earning my Ad/PR degree, opportunities opened up for me that eventually led me to start my own graphic design business. Through that opportunity I was able to provide a variety of creative services to a range of clients — graphic design, video editing, voice-over work, advertising jingles and more.
But as AI began making impressive strides, requests for my services became less frequent.
Don’t get me wrong. I was impressed with AI in the beginning. We used ChatGPT to create silly bedtime stories for our kids, and I used it to help me find information faster and more comprehensively than I could through Google. It was a fun, recreational tool.
But I soon realized that this incredible technology was so easily and widely accessible that it was allowing every business owner, operator and everyday Joe to become a “creative guru” overnight.
Flyers that once took me hours to create were being produced in minutes. Press releases that my education and experience had trained me to write were now being generated by machines. Communication skills didn’t seem to matter anymore because the machine could fix any issues entered into the text frame.
And suddenly, I was overwhelmingly discouraged.
My skills had seemingly become obsolete.
Not just mine, but those of artists everywhere. Original music, original artwork and original writing were all being churned out by computers. I felt genuinely sad for a world that seemed to be getting robbed of its creativity.
But, just like anything, it seems AI is beginning to oversaturate the market.
It didn’t take long for people to grow tired of the sameness of AI-generated flyers. Marketing messages were getting lost in a sea of computer-generated graphics. And then I began to see a glimmer of hope: People started asking for handmade flyers — even when they weren’t beautiful or polished.
People still wanted things made by humans.
My faith was completely restored last week when I got a phone call from a customer who had been trying to use AI to create an ad and was fed up with the process.
“It doesn’t understand my business. It keeps putting things in there that shouldn’t be there, and I just want to work with a human!” he said in frustration.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Because what I’d hoped to be true turned out to be so.
When it comes down to it, people want to work with people.
Computers, software and AI are incredible tools. They can help us bring ideas to life, make our jobs easier and even inspire us in ways we might not have considered. But they can’t replace the heart and soul of human connection.
There are some who might argue that AI is a form of creativity, and while I can’t necessarily discount that, I think it’s important to not allow its use to replace the authenticity of human-made content.
AI certainly has its uses. I might use it to give me feedback on a page layout I’ve created. I might ask it to help me polish wording I’ve already crafted. And sometimes, I use it to create silly videos (using photos I took myself) to share with my kids so we can have a laugh together.
But at the center of it all is human creativity.
And maybe that’s the thing I’ve come to understand: AI hasn’t made creativity less valuable. It has made genuine human creativity more valuable.
Because in a world where everyone has access to the same technology, the thing that sets us apart is still what makes us human — our ideas, our experiences, our quirks, our stories and the heart we put into what we create.
What a boring world we’d live in without that.
Source: Freepik.com