I wonder what wave of AI we’re in? I’ve been through a few. The suspicion phase. The let’s-take-a-look phase. The experimental-images phase. The generating-incredibly-shallow-blog-articles phase.
A year or so ago, those in my industry (the one that used to be advertising) were talking about it and ‘playing with it’ a lot, scrambling to show their twitching clients they were all over it, working out ways to slot it into their processes, hoping it was nothing bigger than the dawn of the Adobe suite.
But somewhere between then and now, AI did what any mega-change is born to do: it won the hearts and minds of a critical mass of users who found themselves in a zone they’d never been in before, transfixed. And, do you know what? I’m one of them.
After much cross-examination (observing its adoption by everyone from my colleagues to my husband and especially myself), I’ve landed on the two ingredients that make it, in the right hands, such a weapon, and consequently why it’s winning hearts:
“It’s the world’s best teacher. And it will slavishly do absolutely anything for you.”
Teacher
It’s been a quantum shift to have an online friend that will literally (in human, conversational terms) answer any question you throw at it in seconds, then answer the follow-up too. It’s so much more than search. This is teaching in a whole new stratosphere. So much that sat in a skill silo is now learnable in a few prompts.
Anyone offering a short course should be scared. Here’s an example. Only last week I was a writer and designer in a meeting where we decided to turn all our PDF guides into web-based ones. Seven days later I’m the sole creator of two fully coded HTML pieces (animations, interactive features and lead forms), none of which existed before, and none of which I engaged anyone but AI to help build.
No short course. No build hand-off. No fear of being out of my depth. Because by my side was something answering all my questions, not with unconvincing chin-pulling, but with academic and technical perfection, followed by demonstration and, the big one, practical application, all in one flow. I’ve been taught something amazing in a week, and I’ve been frothing on it.
It happened again on the morning drive into the city, when I had an off-the-cuff chance to evangelise to my husband, whose workplace were AI virgins, the whole lot of them. I just said: “Why don’t you give Chat a try on some of your drawings and diagrams, it could lift your pack quality.” That was 8am. By 6pm I had a complete convert, sporting the wares to dropped jaws. A week later he had AI designing inside his architectural programs, novice to advanced in the blink of an eye.
Slave
Here’s another thing AI has on its side: it doesn’t have any feelings. With a history in the once-thriving world of the agency creative team, I know the toll feedback takes on a working creative. The hides we had to grow were armadillo-thick, and still, the ego’s flinch is almost involuntary. A wall goes up: pushback, ‘confusion’, defensive brief-citing, or (my own go-to) fake enthusiasm about going back to the drawing board, aneurysm quietly building.
As an ECD I used to work by a mantra: be brutal on the work, but always kind to people. The trouble is, being brutal on the work is never quite kind to the people who spent last night (and the night before) making it. That problem dissolves when the one taking the feedback is not human, but machine. You can be the world’s most annoying collaborator and it doesn’t mind. It’ll take your notes twenty times in an hour and come back bright-eyed with another attempt.
Not so silent assassin?
There is, obviously, a flip side. While I play and make websites on my own, who am I doing it without? A whole team of designers and devs. You cannot deny (and the job market will attest) that AI takes jobs, especially those of copywriters, designers and developers. Knowing what I now know of its capabilities in just my field, I wouldn’t bet against it taking almost any job on the planet. And where would that leave us?
My thesis for the walking wounded of my industry is this: AI doesn’t have to render you unemployable, and it doesn’t have to steal your creative tastebuds. What creative people owe it to themselves to do is take its reins. In the wrong hands it’s a tasteless beast, regurgitating tired designs, ’90s typography and suspiciously snappy copy. With the right stewardship, it’s an unlocker of every idea you ever wanted to make but couldn’t.
- Show it amazing references.
- Brief it with your brand guidelines.
- Give it endless feedback.
- Ask it how to do things.
- And never, ever accept its slop.
Get it into your hands and show a few people your new output. Pretty soon you’ll realise you’re still the creator — you’ve just got a new teacher and slave.