Dear Fellow Creatives: Please Stop Panicking About AI.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone who works in the creative industry ask me breathlessly: Are you worried about AI? Don’t you think it will take our jobs?

I’m not, and I don’t. Here’s why.

Tools like ChatGPT, Koala, and Midjourney are just that - tools. I use them, yes, but I use them as a carpenter uses a nail gun: to get the work done, faster. The nail gun itself can’t build a house. It takes the skill of the carpenter who wields it.

I know that it’s the strength of my prompts, my editing for a particular audience, and the strategy behind the content I'm creating that brings value.

And make no mistake: writing AI prompts is one of many new skills required when working with AI, ones that for the most part didn’t exist 15 months ago.?

So no. I don't believe AI isn’t going to take your job.

Typically, we've heard a lot of gloom and doom in the creative industry. But I'm still a believer in the human brain and all the nuance/baggage/and EQ it brings to the table. And I think others are starting to feel the same.

In a survey released this week of 200 CMOs in six sectors in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, 53% said that the ‘marketing department of the future’ will include an increase in creative roles, and 41% saw a need for prompt engineer roles.

Full disclosure: I worked on this Plus Company / Statista , which has a lot of fascinating? insights, including that despite the end of cookies and third-party data, 75% of Marketers aren’t prepared.?

Change is good. And, Artificial Intelligence encourages us to think differently about Marketing and creativity - including content creation.

But fellow creatives, don’t fear Artificial Intelligence. It can help us fill gaps in customer journeys, build strategies and yes… create content. Good content. Content that speaks to our audiences.?

We just need to learn how best to operate that nail gun.?

Artificial intelligence is a prediction machine, and works best when partnered with human judgment. If you’ve played with ChatGPT, you’ll know that it is predicting which word should come next. It’s not actually creating.

I’ve noticed when creating content with ChatGPT everything is a ‘beacon’ of blah blah blah and stories are often riddled with cliches and platitudes, unless the AI is trained otherwise. And of course, there are comical/concerning hallucinations - things that just aren't true, or don't exist.

But Artificial Intelligence can summarize a lot of data well and provide a solid outline for a story, or a great look at common themes and differences. This, my friends, is helpful.

In Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, Avi Goldfarb, Joshua Gans and Ajay Agrawall talk about the disruption that comes with a new technology like Artificial Intelligence. Here's our chance to rethink how we do things!

As a creative, I embrace machine learning and artificial intelligence as part of the production process.

I encourage you to be curious and play around with AI yourself. Learn where the best prompts will take you, and how to maximize your output. (Imagine creating enough content for A/B tests... Imagine using AI to predict which of your campaigns would perform best with a particular target audience?)

Start seeing what happens when you pick up the nail gun to get started.

And then... add the human judgement. Be the editor. Be the human who can remove those platitudes and give it heart... give it the flourish that will connect with your audience. Yes, of course double check for those hallucinations. (I hope you feel seen, ChatGPT)

For the record, this post was entirely human-generated.

Admittedly, I haven't written on this platform in awhile. Want to learn more about how I use AI to create content? Let me know...