An artist's reflection on AI, authorship, and the value of human creativity.
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For awhile now, I have been doing freelance graphic design artwork for individual projects and organizations. However, within the last few months, the amount of projects I am workin on at a time has vastly increased. I find a lot of joy in creating digital footprints, images, reels, timelines, and pitch decks on Illustrator and Canva for people who may need them. Sometimes I might do it in my bed when I’m feeling a bit of anxiety. It’s a relaxing and fun hobby.
Some of the work that I’ve done is paid and others were done as service. Recently, I agreed to take on a larger project that took some time. When it comes to creating anything, whether it’s a production I’m directing or producing, writing a piece, or graphic designing, I transition into a very Type A personality. I schedule myself until the task gets done. Organizing and follow through is very important to me.
When hired, I typically send clients three to four drafts of varying images to choose from. I take all of their edit suggestions and adjustments and implement them. We continue to go back and forth with this creator-client engagement until the image is exactly what they envisioned it to be. I want them to walk away from me happy and ready to launch their project with pride.
So far, even though I find this work joyful, it can be hard to please people. But I’ve been doing really well at it and getting a lot of compliments, praise, and referrals because of my work.
While working on this larger project I was tasked with creating two different graphics with different colors, fonts, and backgrounds. Then, from those two images, I was to create three variations of each color that focused on a different offering of the event the company was marketing. I was also tasked with creating two different website banners and I had to utilize the images and logos they provided. This specific client didn’t have any real specifics other than they wanted their logo on it and they wanted it to feel inviting so that it would sell their event to their target audience.
I created three different graphics and shared them with their team. They chose their top two and asked me to continue on from drafting to curation. I went back to the drawing board and enhanced those two images with all of their requests, created all of the event banners, and went back and forth with them to adjust the font and photos to their liking.
I finally finished.
They sent everything off to their head, their head liked them, and they wanted to move forward with advertising their event.
A day after everything was approved one of their team members sent an email with a graphic generated by ChatGPT. Her email read:
I asked ChatGPT to create a flyer from the one you created. I really like what AI did. Can we use this?
This has never happened to me before, and I’m writing today still really processing how that email felt.
I don’t know whether to be upset or offended or bust out laughing. I’m still very much in shock.
I spent days on this project for the client, only for a member of their team to take what I did, put it through ChatGPT, and have ChatGPT spit out something they felt was better. I personally don’t think that ChatGPT’s image was better. It was just different. There was a difference in background. A difference in font. A difference in the text effect. The font had a glow and shadow effect to it.
Why not ask, “Can I have this background?” or “Can we try this font?” or “Can we add this effect?” Instead of communicating you used my work and had artificial intelligence reconfigure my intellectual property that I gifted you and committed my time to. And when I sent back numerous drafts, you didn’t give feedback that there was something missing or that you felt something else could have been added.
I’m also struggling, like a lot of people, with AI because it’s becoming habitual and people are using it for everything. AI is making everyone’s writing sound the same and the event graphics look the same, because ChatGPT and tools like it are very one-sided and computerized. When people share on social media, send emails, or write blogs, you can almost instantly tell when they’ve chosen to use an AI tool to generate their sharing. The human nature in the artistry is void. It feels and looks computerized.
And that’s really sad to me.
I’m also starting to witness people, friends included, relinquish their likeness to AI tools that then reconstruct their self portraits or videos. They are using this reconstructed imagery those on their social channels or event publications.
And I’m like, dearly beloved… that’s not how you look in real life. It's giving Georgina in Get Out, having too fallen victim to a body swapping cult.
You are beautiful in real life. Stunning in real life. Brilliant in real life. Why are you letting AI dilute your essence? You’ve allowed AI to reconstruct your entire face and body to fit whatever narrative you’re telling yourself, because no one asked to see you in this altered way.
I’m confused.
My flabs are gasted.
And I’m worried that we aren’t using AI as a tool of improvement, but as a tool of replacement.
And that’s not what it should be used for.
For example, I have a hard time sticking to a budget when I go into a store like Trader Joe’s. If I see something, I’m buying it. Knowing damn well I should not be wasting money.
That’s an area where I need improvement.
ChatGPT is great for that.
I can say, “Hey Chat, can you help me curate a grocery list? My budget is $150 and I’m going to Trader Joe’s. I want the most bang for my buck, healthy options, and a few new trending items, all within my budget.” ChatGPT then generates a list I can use while helping me stay within my budget, sometimes even under it. That’s what AI is good for. Improving our lives and making what we already do a little better.
Taking a piece of art that someone else created, putting it into ChatGPT to reconstruct it is a form of replacement and erasure. You no longer want to use the artist’s point of view. You no longer want to communicate what you need and want with the artist and give them the opportunity to adjust the piece the way you envision it through their lens.
And that brings up another point.
Communication.
Right now society is at an all-time low when it comes to communication. People don’t know how to communicate with each other, so they hide behind AI and social media instead of having open and honest conversations with each other.
It’s really weird.
We’re allowing it to erase the human voice. We’re using AI to communicate for us because we are to lazy to do it ourselves. What are your actual thoughts and viewpoints? What thoughts from your brain can you use to contribute to the conversation? A constructed viewpoint of what a computer thinks about a subject is not what society needs especially in this season. We need actual thinkers, innovators, problem solvers, executors, and finish liners.
When you allow AI to restructure your entire thought, it no longer is your thought. You’re no longer sharing your voice and your views, and that affects how we communicate with one another.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve written things and run them through ChatGPT too.
But I am adamant about using it as a tool of improvement only because baby, if I have nothing at all, I will always have a brain and thoughts of my own. I’ll say, “Hey Chat, can you look at this body of work I wrote for grammatical and punctuation errors? Please keep my tone, idioms, and style.”
That’s improving my work. And baby, sometimes you just gonna get the raw unedited version of my thoughts, typos and all because that too is worth sharing if I so choose to share it.
But saying, “Hey ChatGPT, write my Master’s thesis,” is evidence that we have a larger issue here sweet lamb. You're using the tool as replacement. A temporary fix to a larger problem.
Stop erasing yourselves, beloved. Stop using AI to cater to your intellectual passiveness.
And I’m talking to myself too.
I need to stop down playing my value as an artist, and allowing folks to have the audacity to take my ideas and my work and walk around with them as if they’re theirs, just slightly restructured by ChatGPT. My response should’ve been you can’t use my work at all but I instead took a kinder more educational route.
I just want us to be better. Do better with ourselves and with each other.
AI is a great tool. It’s not going anywhere so we need to learn how to use it responsibly. It can make us better writers and creators while also improving our work and lives.
But it is not meant to erase what we can do, what we look like, or what we sound like.
We already live in a world with a bunch of hateful ass people.
Y’all…I don’t want us to be computerized too.
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