AI as a Creative Tool — Early Thoughts

I'm by no means an expert, and have just started dabbling in the wonderful world of AI to explore how I might integrate into my own creative process, but from what I have played around with, it's getting me really excited about the possibilities.

Unless you've been hiding out, it's likely you've seen lots swirling around the internet about AI and how it's going to impact the art and tech world. There's lots of negativity around the new-to-most topic, and the overarching themes are either one of fear (ie. “the robots are going to take over our jobs and AI will replace us all!”) or excitement and curiosity.

Today, I invite you to enter the curiosity camp and consider how we can use AI as a tool for creativity.

I'm by no means an expert, and have just started dabbling in the wonderful world of AI to explore how I might integrate into my own creative process, but from what I have played around with, it's getting me really excited about the possibilities.

The Two AI Tools I've Been Experimenting With 

Chat GPT is an AI language model that engages in text-based conversations with users, providing helpful and informative responses. Described as “a model which interacts in a conversational way … to generate, edit, and iterate with users on creative and technical writing tasks,” you provide prompts and ask questions that it will then answer for you. 

I've mostly just used it to generate dummy text for projects instead of using lorem ipsum in project mockups (ie. “Write a paragraph about intentional fashion styling for the modern minimalist woman”),  to summarize and gather information on a specific topic (ie."Summarize 'the lover' brand archetype in regards to brand design and strategy"), or to brainstorm captions and headlines based on long-form content I've already created (ie. “Generate SEO-optimized posts about branding from this web page: ____”).

Like I said, just dabbling, and barely scratching the surface.

Midjourney, on the other hand, is an AI tool that is used to generate images from textual, natural language descriptions, or “prompts”. So basically, you use the prompt imagine/ with your description, telling it what you want it to create and then it spits out 4 versions and you can iterate from there. The more descriptive and specific you are, the closer you'll get to what you're imagining — and that's really what it's doing, helping you give visual form to whatever your imagination can dream up.

Again, I've only been playing with it, learning how to better use prompts and exploring — and having fun with it. 

How I’ve Been Incorporating AI Content into Our Creative Process

I think this is one of the things that fascinates and excites me the most — how do we actually start to incorporate these tools into our creative process in a way that enhances what we do and how we do it?

Whether it’s saving time by helping to automate tasks or creating the opportunity to do things quicker, or by functioning as a way to ideate and brainstorm, textually or visually, this is where I’m spending most of my AI time at the moment, learning the tools, but also trying to figure out how it all fits in with our current creative process as a creative studio.

So far, I’ve been using ChatGPT mostly as a brainstorming aid, or to get insight or ideas on a topic I’m exploring, but I think I’m just scratching the surface with that and have a lot further to go.

For Midjourney, I’ve already found a lot of use in using it as a way to generate “custom” stock photos for client projects, or moodboards, or just visuals in general to help support marketing materials when I need content. Again, lots still to learn and explore, but I wanted to share some of my favourite images I’ve generated so far, to give you a sense of how I’m using Midjourney to create imagery that feels like an extension of my brand and bring ideas that exist only in my head, to life.

And because I’m a nerd and I wanted to be able to curate a collection in one place, and share it alongside the prompts I’m using, I started a dedicated Instagram in order to do just that, if you feel so inclined to follow along.

To finish this inaugural AI post up (and I’m sure there will be more following this), here are a few of my initial (rough) thoughts on using AI as a creative tool:

It stresses the importance of clear communication, and mastering words and creative language to guide the outcome.

We're telling these tools what we want, so we have to know what we want, and how to communicate that. The more nuanced and the more clear you are, the better the results will be.

We need a sense of vision, and if we're using these tools for our brands, brand vision.

This is exactly what we do when we work with our clients during the brand strategy phase, developing clear positioning and point of view for the brand vision, values, voice and visuals, and I feel like this will be essential to creating content, both textual and visual, with AI.

Those who are guided by creativity, curiosity and imagination will thrive most here.

My creative director self, the me that struggled in illustration classes in design school because I had the ideas and vision but not necessarily the tactical skills, and the me that loves piecing together various sources of inspiration and layering them together loves this.

It's not a replacement for artistic endeavours.

Whether it's writing copy, generating ideas, or creating imagery, it's a tool to be learned and used in creative ways.

There's a lot of potential when you think of it as part of the creative process in developing a visual strategy.

Similar to how we pull inspiration, translate it into more abstract words and ideas and then remix it into new concepts. This is what I'm really excited for.

There is still so much more to learn and explore here.

Like I said before, I've barely scratched the surface, but my next step is to seek out more resources and information about how to use these tools, and then development my own way of integrating it into my work and creative process.

And that, my friends, is where I will leave you for today. I hope you found this interesting, or helpful, or inspiring. I'm sure this won't be the last time I cover this topic, so let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on this — hop on over to instagram and send me a DM — I’d love to chat more, and I know this is only the beginning.

Regardless, I’m excited, and I hope this got your creative wheels spinning as well!