AI vs Creativity

You might have heard about this new thing, it’s called AI…

I know, we’d like to think of ourselves as fashionably late to this particular soiree.

The biggest thing to revolutionise our increasingly digital world since the last big thing. Although, at the moment, you can count the population of the Metaverse on one hand, and if we go back a bit further and see what’s happened to NFTs, well, the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s looking a lot more Morecambe than Monte Carlo.

It’s a talking point in every industry, and the design and branding world is no different. Now, we’ve all dabbled with a bit of ChatGPT, asked one of the apps on our phone that’s suddenly become ‘AI Powered’ a few questions that it’s got wrong and, for all the hype and exclamations that this is the future, thought “Well that must’ve been my fault, I can’t have done it right.” Sound familiar?

The reality is that that’s where we’re at. Weird answers to straightforward questions, Midjourney images of people with six fingers and, erm, Will Smith eating spaghetti. These are the best of times, these are the worst of times…

I’m 32 later this year, and in September I’ll have worked in design for a decade. A milestone worth a nod, but it’s also a long time that feels like no time at all. I bring it up because during that decade, there’s been no shortage of things that have supposedly been ready to bring about an apocalypse to the creative industries, AI’s just the latest. There’s been dozens of low-cost DIY web builders, logo makers, and stock libraries that were all meant to put me out of a job. Fiverr’s even on the New York Stock Exchange. Yet, we’re all still here, with the design industry making up close to 5% of the UK’s total GVA and employing a similar 1 in 20 of the UK workforce.

Whether it be AI, Fiverr, or something else in the future, the same thing tends to happen when this type of commodification heads the way of the creative industries.

Differentiation thrives.

It distinguishes the people – or robot algorithms – that can do what a client asks for to the best of their abilities, and the people – definitely people this time – that can use their abilities to do what’s best for the client, guiding them away from overcrowded marketplaces and industry-wide games of follow the leader, towards an area of whitespace where they can be themselves and stand out.

This sense of purpose, personality, and distinction is central to successful brands, and as a studio, they’re part of the fabric of our branding process, because the more things look the same, talk the same, and feel the same, the more valuable being different becomes. Our individual lived experience, the way that our brains cross-reference and meld together different pieces of information to create new, exciting things is the human superpower.

So, is AI destined to take over? Maybe.

Will creatives let it? That’s another story.