Part I of an AI Series
This is the first essay in a series about implementing AI tools in a creative business environment—a marketing firm. I’m specifically focused on the use of AI to ‘originate’ artwork or supporting imagery to be used in a variety of communications collateral. I’m not sure where this AI journey leads, but this series is meant as a first-hand account of our experience. How is AI implemented? What are the best tools and practices? What are the benefits of AI? What about legal, ownership and authorship implications? What are the moral considerations of using computer code to design ads or other visual elements?
For this series, I’ve decided to start, not with the practical, but with the philosophical, by posing a fundamental question: can artificial intelligence, untouched by any human influence, create art in its truest sense? And while some might suggest that graphic design is not a true art form, for the purposes of this exercise, I’ll simply say that the designs we create at Apple Box Studios aspire to achieve the same outcomes of art—to touch and compel the viewer to think or act. In this respect, graphic design is certainly a derivative form of art.
To answer our question, we first need to define art at its most essential level. Ayn Rand defines it this way, “Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence.”
To argue a popular and contrary position—that art is completely subjective and therefore, anything could be considered art simply based on the artist’s interpretation—this definition of art ironically destroys its own premise. If anything can be considered art, the concept of art is wiped out. If everyone must value everyone else equally, the concept of value evaporates.
Enter AI and our fundamental question—can an advertising firm use generative AI to create artwork or design ads without any human involvement, inspiration or refinement? While this may certainly be technically possible, I believe it to be self-defeating and, ultimately, not the creation of true art. In the end, the answer is ‘no.’ To exempt the human experience from this process is to forfeit our own identity and render our creations meaningless.
So now the question becomes, ‘How does a creative agency go about using AI in its development process?’ Like a paintbrush, an easel, or a piano, AI is a tool to assist the artist. AI is a means to realize a vision, not the visionary. It is a tool of creativity, not the creator.
At Apple Box Studios, we see AI as a writing-based tool that must be skillfully prompted by a vivid imagination and a clear purpose to communicate some essential nature of the human experience. Clear and expressive writing is the fuel for generative AI and the subject of my next blog.
