ChatGPT & Lensa - My Questions On A.I. and The Impact To Creativity

One night in a chat group with my friends, we decided to follow an online trend of A.I created images that various celebrities and influencers had used and blown up over social media. It’s not often someone gets art made about them, so we could see how this trend caught on.

We downloaded the app called Lensa and paid $4.89 AUD for a set of A.I images. We eagerly awaited what the A.I was going to do our uploaded images. The results were pretty interesting. I loved these ones -

Then there were some odd ones too. Let’s not horrify everyone with those results.

This led us to ponder about the immediate future and A.I, particularly on creativity. Here’s some thoughts and questions about it.

On A.I. and Creativity

Let’s redefine my theme of creativity and creative intelligence. Creativity is the utilisation of our imagination to create by interlinking various ideas together to create something new and to think outside the box. It’s a means of personal expression whether it's an artistic endeavour or the way we create a solution to the problems we face. Creative intelligence is our ability to think creatively to be able to overcome the challenges in personal lives as well as being the foundation to solving corporate issues and bringing ideas and innovation to life.

Is A.I capable of being creative also? To experiment, I asked ChatGPT, an A.I chat bot built by Open A.I that has also gone viral recently to write a poem about creativity and imagination –

Quite well crafted I’d say! I challenged it further.. Can the A.I add more metaphors to that poem? Firstly I was impressed that it retained my previous enquiry to use as a reference point, and secondly it followed through and added metaphors, just as I asked it to.

Lastly, I asked it to define creativity and creative intelligence just as I did earlier. The A.I gave a well-constructed answer and goes further into the aspect of success (Full disclosure - I probably should have done that too!). It's interesting to see the similarities as well -

A key definition of creativity is generating ideas. An A.I is relying on data, and whilst it has access to the vast wealth of knowledge of the internet to create an idea, it’s never truly original. A.I is building from a pattern and trend of data to formulate the best response to the question that has been asked of it. Because of this, A.I is not capable of creating a spontaneous original idea like humans can.

It leads me to wonder about people’s reception to the content that A.I can generate. Part of me respects the well-constructed informative answers it can create, but on the other hand, I also appreciate it when I can feel and understand the tone of voice that the author is speaking through their written word, or the emotion that an artist puts into their artwork.

Where I Distinguish Myself From A.I.

Tone of voice and someone’s persona is something that A.I cannot replicate. (At least in the mean time! You never know in the future. How frightening.) Could A.I speak like me? Would it ever drop a train of thought like I just did where I stated a fact and had to note that it’s for the present time? What about the time I wrote an article on the flow state and made mention of a Rhianna lyric? It sounds silly, maybe unprofessional, but putting a line like that shows my persona and identity and is proof of my original work. It keeps my tone of voice, relevance to my time and place in the world when I wrote the article and is the type of fun article that I want to read too. Would A.I ever reach that point? Will it feel genuine?

I don't claim to be a perfect writer and I am absolutely far from it. This process of writing a newsletter is practice for me and I'd like to believe I'm improving each week. In comparrison, an A.I. produces grammatically correct sentence structure and sticks to the point to deliver what is being asked of it. Dare I say, it's too perfect and appropriately robotic. It's suitable for an informative article which ironically is what I aim to do too, but I write to give value through a mix of information and entertainment with a tone of light-heartedness. I can still distinct myself from A.I. this way with my writing style.

On Plagarism

The other perspective I learnt about is on A.I giving credit. On the A.I art front, it’s been noted by observers that there are portraits where the original artist’s signature is noted on the A.I produced art. An example is below –

Practically speaking, we’re consenting to uploading our faces to be used onto models. However the ones who are not consenting to this process are the original artists whose artwork is being used by the A.I. Their artwork is being used as the basis for the A.I models. Where is A.I. sourcing the original art? How do we give credit to those original artists? How do we protect Is this a lawsuit waiting to happen? Where is the line drawn on plagiarism?

If we consider the concept of inspiration, everyone has their unique expression in how their ideas and thoughts combine to trigger action or the creation of something new. This process occurs from one's personal experiences, the challenges they face, other people, in nature and art, music and literature. If A.I art is also being “inspired” by the same thing, it’s practically an enhanced and sped up version of this process. The only difference is that A.I. limited by the dataset that it has, whereas a human’s potential can potentially be infinite. This limitation is despite how vast and subtantial the A.I's dataset is to draw knowledge from. If inspiration and creativity is an inherently human quality, then the use of A.I. to support or enhance creative tasks threatens to undermine the unique value of human creativity if it becomes too streamlined and convenient.

Back onto plagiarism, how will schools and academics now factor in A.I written essays and submissions? This is an extremely powerful tool for students to use considering the level of intelligence on responding to exam-style questions and essay prompts. Could this be the end of homework assignments? (Heck, I’d be cheering for this if I were 20 years younger!).

What about journalism? Will articles and the news be replaced by A.I bots? For now, ChatGPT is still in its infancy and is prone to error. The famous tech youtuber, MKHBD tested ChatGPT by asking for a review of the iPhone 14 Pro which it was able to produce, but noted the camera specs were incorrect as it mentioned its 12 megapixel cameras but is actually 48 megapixels. ChatGPT also incorrectly quoted the colour options of silver, gold, graphite and pacific blue which are the iPhone 12 colours. I also tested it by asking – What is the furthest planet from the sun? It initially answered with Pluto, which is no longer correct as it’s been deemed a dwarf planet by NASA, but when I prompted ChatGPT to regenerate the response, it gave me a correct answer of Neptune.

Closing Thoughts

As creators, we should leverage the tools presented to us to become even more creative. A.I is no exception as it can create new ideas as well as expedite and streamline our business processes. The human element remains in tact by being the ones to utilise those ideas and to create something from what A.I generates, but we should be conscious of the consequences of continuing to develop this technology as the repercussions are significant. In time I hope to see my questions answered, though in the mean time, I am excited to see how much further A.I can be developed, if not perhaps a bit cautious too.

Why not conclude this article on asking whether A.I. will replace humans. At least A.I. doesn't think it can replace humans anytime soon, though it acknowledges it's much faster and efficient than us.

Let's see where this journey goes.

(P.s. I’m glad I got those A.I. images got some use, even if it’s just for a weekly newsletter article of mine!)

If you enjoyed this read, please leave a like and a comment. Consider?subscribing to The Creative Catalyst Newsletter?to avoid missing out on future articles. I also invite you to join the?Proximity Is Power group, which is a tight-knit community get-together every Wednesday night where we discuss various topics to learn and grow together, and is a great way to meet new people and expand your network!

Feel free to get in contact with me too! Happy to connect and hear about your creative ventures.

Stay creative, always.