Unless you have been impressively living under a rock or in a nuclear bunker for the past couple of years, you’d be fully aware that AI in all its guises has undoubtedly made itself known within our everyday lives, and it comes as no surprise that ‘ChatGPT’ was in the top 20 most searched Google terms worldwide in 2023.
As humans of the 21st century, surrounded by technology that’s evolving at an unprecedented rate, we’ve become accustomed to embracing, adjusting, and welcoming the new. For better or worse, change is happening around us and we’ve all bagged ourselves a one-way ticket on a journey into the somewhat unknown. But what does AI mean for creatives, and our industry and is it a threat?
For some time, creatives have been using AI in one form or another – whether that be to cut out a mountain goat from a seemingly complex background, generate harmonious colour palettes fit for a King, or pixel-precise subject tracking in motion design software. AI has become another tool in the box, that if used correctly can enhance and accelerate design processes, giving humans more time for meaningful solutions to real problems.
Generative AI, which is focused on creating new content from learned data (think Midjourney, Dall•E, ChatGPT et al), is seeped with ethical concerns over data ownership, authorship, and intellectual property rights and continues to be a hot topic open for discussion. This has led to new laws and Content Authenticity Initiatives that provide transparency around content produced with AI tools to prevent misinformation – although, a 15-fingered Pope in the latest Balenciaga drop could be a giveaway! However, when used sensitively these AI tools can be an invaluable vehicle for research, storyboarding, and supporting ideation to name a few.
AI won’t be slowing down in 2024 and we expect multimodal AI, which can process and analyse data from multiple sources, such as text, images, and audio will become the new buzzword. This could mean more human-like responses to problems and better analysis forecasting – trendsetters you heard it here first.
Ultimately, there is no stopping AI’s influence but designers, creatives and wordsmiths contain the missing pieces that AI just doesn’t have (yet!). Humans have empathy and personal history that come with living in the real world and we must remain smart about how we embrace its potential.
*Disclaimer: This has been written by a human
