Should AI Take Your Creative Journey?

This week's thought: I wonder if we are cheating ourselves by outsourcing to AI the journey of creating something or developing a strategy.

I’m finding that the outcome of writing is not just putting words on a page; it is the time you spend thinking about the idea, the choice of words, how your audience will feel about those words, who your audience is, and how they feel.

The value of doing this weekly article is not just meeting a goal of posting between 500 to 1000 words here every week (mostly) with the desired outcome of you liking this, maybe sharing it, considering me a credible marketer, or occasionally funny.

The value of doing this is also me going through the process.

It’s the journey.

That journey, at least for me, takes different turns that could have me wind up somewhere different than where I thought I would be.

Through a bit of deep thinking (well, deep'ish) and research, my position on a topic might change, hopefully deepen, and create something better.

Or maybe the process decides, “No, Ian, this is shit”.

Through the process, I’m developing myself, I’m learning, and without sounding too errrrrrr… wanky… about this, I am crafting. And the act of crafting, being in flow, is a big part of the value of doing this.

Like a sculptor sculpting, there is joy in the sculpt.

Why this long love letter to the craft of writing?

Well, the topic du jour - generative AI and synthetic content.

Yes, a good prompt needs some skill, intuition, and insight, but ChatGPT is not going to tell you something is a shit idea, or that publishing this will make you sound wanky or hold your hand on the longer journey of research and deep thinking.

As many people are commenting right now, whatever the robots can create will be the average of what came before, and what they create is dull. But maybe that’s a slightly disingenuous and arrogant view as the machines get better and better. We are all the average sum of what went before, but of course, the difference is that we can be creative and innovative.

And I believe that is found in the journey.

Skipping this and having the machines deliver your pros is cheating yourself out of an opportunity.

Let’s imagine that you or ChatGPT could each create something plausibly comparable today, and your audience would not be able to tell much difference between them.

Each achieves the goal of doing the thing.

But, when you research and write it, the difference won’t be in the words on the page; the difference will be in you and what you’ve learned and achieved. And maybe the quality of the next article.

And, bonus point: when someone engages with you after consuming this content you will deliver on the promise of the article.

I’ve seen this before, waaaaay before ChatGPT, when I attempted to engage with a CMO on a topic they had supposedly published an article about that, it turned out was clearly ghost-written by someone who knew their stuff, not this clueless stuffed shirt standing before me.

It’s the same with strategy; we are starting to use these tools to help us create plans, and it is getting increasingly good at that too. If you want to create a content marketing strategy, it will nail something, based on the sum of everything that it and maybe you have read or learned on the topic. And it may be good enough.

The bit missing will be the journey, not just your personal journey but the journey the team takes when creating a plan.

We’ve all been in meetings where the answer was obvious, maybe very obvious to some, but the group needs to go on a journey to get to that same point. And when they do, the solution is co-owned, and everyone is on board.

I’m not a Luddite. Generative AI should have a seat at your creative table, maybe as a researcher, assistant, editor, or co-creator.

After all, moving forward from a blank page is so hard! The creative journey is not easy.

But, I wonder if we are focusing on the wrong argument when considering the threat of AI on creativity when we focus on the quality of what is produced, as this will improve.

The argument for a more balanced way of working with AI should focus on the journey, not the output. The missed opportunity to learn, the time to think we will miss, and what that shortcut will cost us in the long run.

They say that AI won’t take our jobs; someone using AI will.

Perhaps, but I think someone outsourcing their creativity and innovation to AI isn't the threat. It's someone who dances with AI, does the work, learns, and injects their humanness.

Back to the question in the title: should AI take your creative journey?

Nah, it's the best bit.