3 Ways Generative AI Is Changing Media Creation

With social media feeds being flooded by Midjourney images and inboxes swelling with ChatGPT-authored marketing, it’s clear that generative artificial intelligence (AI) is successful in getting people’s attention. What’s less clear to some is why AI is valuable, and why people are seemingly eager to steer into the singularity. Reasons are numerous and AI has unique value, especially in the area of media creation. Creativity is a nebulous process, and the act of creation can be a long, arduous road. Generative AI allows for a lower barrier to entry for artistic expression, faster iteration for creators, and for an individual creator to function as the head of their own studio.

Jane Doe Becomes Beyoncé

Previously, one might have needed years of training in singing and dancing to create a song and music video in the style of Beyoncé. With AI, all one needs is the idea and basic inputs: one’s voice and body image; the tool does the rest. We’ve already seen how AI can create an entirely new Rembrandt, now, all other forms of artistic expression are fair game: animation, live-action TV and film, design, and architecture will become more accessible forms of expression for the average person—at least, the average person who can learn the art of writing prompts. This is true not just for individuals, but also for companies. Startups like Capsule “leverage the best foundational models to make video creators 10–100x more productive, while simultaneously lowering the barrier to entry so that teams in marketing, sales, success, and leadership can create compelling on-brand videos on their own,” without necessarily having all the professional-level editing skills that would previously have been required.

Iteration Becomes Faster

Artist Don Allen Stephenson III wanted to create an image that visualized the moment in which “an anime mech robot…discovers the meaning of life.” So, he fed a (slightly more robust) prompt into an AI image generator and got something he’d never have imagined. “[DALL-E] made that image,” Stevenson comments on the output, “and I wasn’t even thinking of that at all, and it kind of blew my mind.” Generative AI fundamentally changes the concept of “waiting for inspiration to strike.” An idea was suddenly not only apparent, but visible to Stephenson, and it otherwise may only have come to him on a hike, while washing dishes, or never at all. As author Douglas Heaven puts it, “By trawling through an exhaustive set of options, computers typically find ones that a human would have missed.”

Skillful use of AI allows creators of all kinds to iterate faster, and not just in the early brainstorming stages, but also in the high-stakes development stages. For example, animation, film and video games all make use of storyboards. By using AI to help generate the various storyboard images, artists can run a series of images by a test audience—and receive feedback—much sooner than if the artists generate all the images themselves. And the equivalent in other industries—design, architecture, etc.—is that prototypes can be crafted in less time. This allows artists to focus less of their creative time and energy on mock-ups that ultimately get thrown out, and more of their time and talent on the final version.

Artist Becomes “Studio Head”

An extension of the idea of faster iteration is that now, an average independent artist—or even a non-artist creator—can effectively function as a studio head. Previously, this role was only available to those artists that reached certain heights of success or were able to otherwise secure enough financial resources to employ others. Walt Disney is one of the most well-known artists to very early on stop making the art himself and instead direct the work of his hired hands. Other artists that work in a similar model include Damien Hirst, who believes the real creative act lies in the idea, not the execution, and Jeff Koons, who once said that if he had to produce all of his art by himself, he wouldn’t even be able to produce one piece a year. Thanks to the help of many assistants, Koons averages an artistic output of around 10 sculptures and 10 paintings yearly. Thanks to AI, the average person has a higher likelihood of being able to rival Koons’ in the quantity of artistic output without requiring a studio full of assistants.

The Generative Generation

On one side, there is a fear that generative AI could make writers and artists obsolete, that creativity will no longer be the sole purview of humankind. On the other side, Ray Kurzweil predicts that AI will instead become an integral part of writers and artists. Jan Bieser, Senior Researcher and Speaker of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, cuts a nice middle ground, asserting that, “Looking forward, the most successful ideas likely won’t come from bright thinkers alone but from those best at mindfully steering intelligent machines while remaining firmly in the driver’s seat.” In this way, AI will allow for more people to express themselves artistically, for faster development of the creative visions that creators wish to express, and for greater output of creators during their lifetime. Ultimately, the rise of generative AI puts humankind in a position to better harness the world’s creativity.