Recently, an ominous statement has been on the lips of almost everyone: “AI is taking over”. But what does this truly mean for the future of the creative industry?
This article will explore the threats and benefits that AI poses and the extent to which these factors are already present in the industry. However, this is not an ordinary article.
I have taken on the challenge of using ChatGPT as a co-author in order to experiment with the idea of a co-dependency between writer and computer.
Based on my instructions, the chatbot was tasked with writing sentences that fitted into my article and enabled me to take further inspiration from its suggestions and for it to model my tone and structure. Here it is:
The advent of AI represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of the creative industries. This innovative partnership between human imagination and artificial intelligence has commenced a shift in how we approach the creation of art.
AI promises to enhance efficiency by offering tools that automate tasks and provide data-driven insights. It also opens doors to new forms of art and content, with personalised experiences becoming the norm.
However, the advent of AI also brings challenges such as ethical concerns and potential job disruption. These concerns are already coming to light, as was seen in the recent strike of over 11,000 writers in film and adjacent industries.
One of their concerns that triggered the strike was the lack of control over artificial intelligence, particularly in regard to ‘deepfakes’, which is a form of synthetic media that has been manipulated to look convincingly like another person.
These deepfakes can be made to do or say anything, from making the Pope wear a puffer jacket to more serious crimes like fraud. There are also concerns surrounding academic integrity, as the use of AI for plagiarism purposes has posed a serious dilemma for universities.
Yet it is clear that the interest in AI art is immense. For example, in 2018, an AI-generated artwork named “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy” sold at auction for over $432,000.
Another example was the literary success of the book “The Day A Computer Writes a Novel”, which passed the first round of screening for the Hoshi Shinichi literary competition.
Therefore, although we may embrace the creative and collaborative potential of AI, we must also navigate the ethical and professional challenges it poses.
My evaluation of this experience:
Co-authoring with an AI was a novel process. Could you differentiate between what I wrote and what was written by ChatGPT?
It had many positives, as its knowledge of language is incredible, it never makes any mistakes, and it has good ideas about what to include.
However, it was sometimes difficult to get it to write in the tone that I wanted, as it tended to be overly formal and extremely profound.
This meant I still had to heavily edit the article it produced to create one that was suitable for a student readership. I also had to do all the research myself as it had no up-to-date statistics, so I was still the main contributor to this article. I don’t think AI will be replacing authors just yet!
