Creativity Needs more than Prompts

The fear everyone has of AI is, it will replace creativity. It will do it cheaper and maybe better.  Anti-AI proponents will say it will never be better.  Is that true? 

I dove into AI this week. I am the Communication officer of a local Council in Chattanooga Tennessee.  We needed to tell everyone about our Expo and that it is happening in March.  I wrote a simple 30 sec spot to announce the Expo.  I created a character as a mascot for the Council.  In the past, I have animated this character myself.  I normally have the character just walk in or stand by a cup of coffee and wave his hand, while a Voice Over played.   No real heavy lifting.

I decide for this piece, I would lean into AI.  How hard can it be?  It was not hard, but in the end, it was not cost effective and took a lot of my time.  Time I could have spent animating it myself and with less insecurity.  Let me explain. 

I subscribed to Deevid and Discript.  I used both for this project just to test them both out for this simple animation. I should also mention I used Soundly for the AI. (Again, not impressed.  I should have voiced it myself.)

I am not going to bore you with all the prompts.  It was the prompt that leads me to the conclusion that AI will not replace creativity.  Creativity and great ideas come from imagination and mistakes.

Imagination and Mistakes. That is what creativity is for me and all that encompasses creative as I know. I know other artists follow the same path. We have these ideas that float around in our head, and we have no idea how to explain it.  If I am writing a story, I will rewrite a story multiple times before it is the story I am trying to tell.  If it is a drawing, it is drawing and redrawing multiple times.  This is not something the AI can ever do. AI is 1’s and 0’s.  It is code.  If I cannot explain exactly…exactly what my intention is, then AI will fail. If I cannot create the right prompt, if I cannot articulate in prompts what my needs are, then AI will never replace creativity.

AI tools, as it is now, is based on coins or points.  It takes so many coins to make a 5 second video.  It takes more coins if I wanted the video to be 10 seconds long.  Every time it gets it wrong, it cost money.  My character was simple.  I needed a close up shot of my character. The character looks into the camera, raises his hands and then says two words. (I also prompted that the background should be chroma key green, which I thought was one particular color.   There is only one green that is chroma key green.  Apparently for AI, not true.)  I spent the next hour and 6 renders later to finally achieve something I could use. So, six times I had to feed the meter to have it render.  I had 700 coins and it went down to 600.  I jumped from 5 to 10 second videos, and I tried a different AI engine, which of course cost more coins.   When I say, “Something I could use”, it was exactly that.  It was not what I prompted.  I prompted AI to have my character to say just two words.  I needed the character to have his lips move for two words.  I repeated that in my prompt multiple times and yet when the character rendered out and his lips moved, it was like he was reading a book.  There is a wonderful YouTube video that asked AI to create a picture of a full glass of wine.  It created a glass that was 3/4 full, which is probably the exact measurement if you ask for a glass of wine at a restaurant. The youtuber asked again AI to create a picture of a full glass of wine that is filled to the brim.  AI rendered the exact picture of the glass of wine that was 3/4 full. While it will be true in the near future that AI can learn and be better next time, it is a perfect example of programming vs nuances of language.   

My ultimate point.   This has nothing to do about AI understanding our prompts, it has everything about us creatives being able to create the prompts. Every AI engineer and coder is going to say the AI will be smarter than us… perhaps.  But it will never read our minds and if we cannot put into words what we want, then it can never be creative.  AI will never create; it will only be reactive, it will only imitate, reproduce what has already been done.    

Creative people sit around and think creative stuff all day.  We have ideas swimming around in our heads.  We may or may not put these ideas out in the world, but AI can never do this.  AI does not sit idle and think about an idea and nourish that idea and finally execute.  No, AI will only execute once prompted.  

That is my whole point. There are a lot of analytics that will tell us trends.  There are the trends themselves that are repeatable and imitated.  Absolutely true and the people that only imitate and not create in marketing, Ad agencies, and influencers will disappear.  AI can replace those workers.  AI will do much of the administrative tasks.  I watched not too long ago how well a robot can build a car.  It is a new world for many jobs, and we will need to adjust.  Getting back to my point, if we cannot think of the proper prompt, then the AI tools will not work like we want it to.  I wanted an animated character to move his lips for two words and then wink at the camera.  It took me six tries and an hour to achieve something that I perceive to be something easy. If I spent that hour to animating it myself, I would have gotten exactly what I wanted and, to look further into the future, I could have used it as a template for other projects.  If I needed a change, such as the timing of my character from saying the words and winking, I could have created that change without being charged additional coins.   

I do believe that AI will be easier to use and smarter sooner than later, but I don’t believe AI would have thought of using a fox as a mascot for my council.  It would not have thought of how to use the character in an indirect nonverbal manner.  I believe AI will always be a linear processing tool and creativity will always remain in the nonlinear world.  Nonlinear is just where I like to live.  I like AI as a tool, because it will help me get my crazy ideas out there quicker. I wil jst hv to lern to write prompts bittr and make sure my Spl chck in on.  Lol Embrace the new world, no one is going anywhere.

About the Author

Eric Clajus believes every person, and every business, has a story worth telling. With decades of experience in video production and creative storytelling, he creates work that connects and builds trust.

He is also the creator of EC Creative Sound and Story, a fiction podcast where he writes, narrates, and produces original short stories with compelling twists and meaningful endings.

Learn more at https://anygoodstory.comListen on Spotify