Generative AI: A Blessing or a Curse for Creatives?

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a bit of a contentious topic among us creatives—at least in the social media space. While I agree that there can be and have been good and bad uses of this technology, there are others who sit at the far extremes of the Luddite and Erudite camps. Regardless of where you fall, it’s important to recognize that AI will affect almost every industry; and precautions are needed to avoid living in a potential dystopia science-fiction writers have been writing about for decades.

I had my “Oh man, we’re really living in the future now” moment back in 2022. Even though I’d grown up during the birth of the internet and was an avid sci-fi fan, when DALLE-2 and Midjourney were released that year, the concept of a program being able to generate images based on text descriptions seemed too futuristic to be true, even for me. But it was true. And I still don’t know how to feel about it. Change was coming, and it would come despite how anyone felt.

Sure enough, chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude were released to the public only a few months after. While tech-giants like Microsoft and Google seemed to be concerned about the impacts of their emergent technology on society—sending an open letter to the White House about the dangers of AI, likening it to the nuclear bomb—update after update have been pushed out since then in an attempt to improve their large language models. What it is, really, is an arms race with trillions of dollars on the line. While some glaring issues have been addressed—like preventing the generation of harmful material—we’re still scrambling a year later to develop ethical guidelines and regulations for the use and distribution of AI-generated content. It also doesn’t help that many of our lawmakers can’t tell the difference between a Wi-Fi and Ethernet connection.

I’ve tried several of these AI programs, and each was more impressive than the last, and the applications for these systems only keep growing. For instance, just two weeks ago, I came across a video demonstration for HeyGen, which can dub a video in multiple languages while preserving the original speaker’s voice and facial expressions. They offered a minute-long free trial run, and so, curious, I gave it a try as well to test just how capable it is. You can see the results below. It isn’t perfect, but like DALLE and ChatGPT, I can only imagine it’d get better.

Speaking as someone who not only had an interest in writing, but voice acting in Japanese anime, HeyGen sounds like a nightmare for actors looking to start their careers. Things like this offer corporations more incentives to replace a majority of their workforce in favor of AI programs to cut costs—a problem that’s only been exacerbated thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the world economy.

Still, despite the number of issues generative AI brings—which, honestly, is more of a result from capitalism than anything—there are many benefits if they’re used responsibly. They can be used to bridge the language barrier and make content more accessible, teach us new skills in a more personalized manner, and serve as sources of inspiration when we’re in a creative slump.

OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT and DALLE-2, have stated their goal is to create an Artificial General Intelligence within the next decade. Whether or not that remains within the realms of science fiction, we need to do our best to prepare for a very strange future.