AI Isn't Killing Creativity, We Already Did
If we want to start blaming someone for killing creativity, we should probably start off with a period of introspection.
As a freelance writer who often writes speculatively, having a second set of eyes on your work to check for structural issues, spelling mistakes, and such is invaluable - particularly when available for free. For longer projects, scripts, novels, and such, the presence of an editor is highly important, as is content written specifically for a client. However, for those of us not working for a client directly, and lacking in the funds to pay for an editor, a tool such as Grammarly is pretty useful to give your work a once-over. Features such as the tone-checker, I somewhat appreciate, but rarely use; whereas syntaxical and structural errors, I will pay attention to or ignore depending on my preference. This is a tool that isn’t taking away from my writing ability, but challenging me to write to the best of said ability. However, when I was sitting in a meeting the other day, I was told that Grammarly, and other AI tools should not be used by writers. This is a tool I had used for years, and before this had been using the spellcheck function on Word to do exactly the same thing. Granted, a case may be made for laziness in terms of spelling and grammar, but I always actively review the suggestions that have been made; even now, I stare at a sea of blue and red underlined words and phrases, some of which I will listen to the suggestions of, and others that I ignore knowing that it lends itself more to my written style. So why, in a room full of other creatives, should I have to defend myself for using Grammarly when the issue of our dwindling creativity as a society lies elsewhere?
I think it is important to clarify that I am not completely pro-AI, nor am I completely anti-AI - in fact, you could seriously save yourself some time and stop reading now if you are looking for a clear answer on whether it is a good or a bad thing. I am not really writing to critique Artificial Intelligence, but rather how the debates around it are ignoring wider issues.
AI, used as a blanket term often to solely refer to Generative AI, is not responsible for laziness and in fact, those who present their argument in a statement like this are themselves guilty of laziness and lacking in the creativity department. If creativity is the victim of bloody murder, as so many people claim it is, then AI is not the murderer. Generative AI, instead, is more akin to a zombie: something that resembles the deceased, but in a form that is entirely unlike its original self. Creativity is in there somewhere, it is just caked in the rotting flesh of falsely happy voiceover artists who were never really here. Creativity, in its original form, needed to be killed to become part of the undead, and ultimately, - much like the allegorical meaning of any good zombie film, the blame is pinned back on us as a society - specifically, I would draw comparisons to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and say that the blame lays largely at the door of capitalism.
Obsessed with the surety of return on investment, we created a data-driven world where thought, free-will and gutterall instinct were taken away. Gone are the days of making advertising based on a feeling that it might be something new, but rather it has to be backed up with engagement figures to guarantee its success. Social media, algorithms and rewarding certain kinds of content with inflated popularity based on the specific build of the platform these are where we have seen our precious creativity slip away. In a world obsessed with ‘side hustles’ and turning everything from hobbies to raising children into opportunities for monetisation and ‘brand deals’, the creative has been replaced with soulless content machines intent on pleasing only the algorithm that rules over them. Post using this exact word count, use this number of hashtags, make sure to get a couple of emojis in there at the start of each line… Content is creativity by numbers, and it has sucked the joy out of creating, and I should know - it was my job to regurgitate news from other sources in a slightly more light-hearted way for £30 per article for about 3 years.
Original thought is not rewarded by a system that rewards people for playing the game. Instead, people have bought into a lifestyle that turns them into a product. Something as simple and joyous as a meal out is no longer a meal out; it is an opportunity to create engagement, to prove yourself as a potential brand partner.
So before generative AI for the masses came social media algorithms. And before the social media algorithms came SEO, another culprit with their head in the stocks - finding themselves accused of the crime of destroying creativity. The internet created the buzzwordification of writing, prioritising your return on a search engine over the joy that someone would have from reading your work. Human emotion is removed because that doesn’t help to pay the bills. Beyond a service economy, we find ourselves all servants.
The internet itself isn’t entirely to blame, either. In every form that creativity is supposedly allowed to shine, there is something with both hands around its neck. In Hollywood, studio executives commission endless remakes, franchises and adaptations of just about any IP that they can get their hands on to guarantee something of a return. Even before you end up with a script in the hands of these greedy executives, you have probably followed the painting-by-numbers story structure guidance of one of the many snake oil salesmen telling you that their version of story structure is the only way to write a script - and for only £50 you can have all of the secrets. Even in schools, children are taught to do creative writing to a very limited set of specifications that reward following the formula set out by an exam board.
Like I said, it is not an internet-specific issue; it is an issue across the creative spectrum. Ultimately, in fact, I don’t really think it is an issue. For as much as it can be proclaimed an issue, and it may reduce the creativity on display in the vast majority of content across these forms, there are always people out there willing to create for the sake of creating, not just to feed the content machine. The money goes where the people are willing to play the game, but there is more than enough space in this content-hungry world for people to create simply for the joy of it and for the joy of having people see things.
Not for a second am I proclaiming that Generative AI is a good thing for creativity, far from it. But, if creating a video of Martin Luther King Jr. turning heel and challenging Malcolm X to a showdown at Wrestlemania using Sora AI is bringing you kicks and letting you flex your creative muscles, then good for you. Sure, you’ve just wasted enough water to keep entire villages hydrated for about a year, but it beats reading another formulaic post slagging off AI to try and get engagement on LinkedIn.
As I finish this article, there are about 50 or so Grammarly recommendations; I have made a creative decision to ignore them. There is no SEO check going on, no emojis to increase readability, and no structural formula followed (as I’m sure you can tell). Who is to say whether that makes this better or worse, more creatively earnest? The only thing we can really know for certain is that I’d rather have written this than mined social media for trending topics to re-write about.