The early man would have seen a savannah being burnt by fire and been afraid of it. But some adventurous soul would have ventured closer to the fire, felt the heat, seen the charred bodies left behind and recognized the potential to harness it. And the rest would have been history.
Since the early days, inventions and discoveries have evoked various emotions in human beings. Shock, fear, awe, inspiration would have battled for supremacy while the person tried to understand what these discoveries meant.
We seem to be in a similar place with Artificial Intelligence today. With people like Elon Musk warning of a possible Terminator like apocalyptic scenario and articles after articles talking about how AI could mean loss of jobs, people are running scared. The few hardy souls that are experimenting are being slowly heard but the pace could be much faster.
Is AI as scary as it is purported to be? Is it going to take away human jobs as is being predicted? Or, is it just another tool to tame and harness while we let human brilliance take the lead?
A young designer in our firm recently quipped, “When the world of art moved from cutting and pasting of images to photoshop to creating advertisements, there were a lot of warnings that the world of advertising would no longer require humans. But that does not seem to have been the case. We have moved to producing more work in less amount of time with no loss of creativity!”.
As a firm full of people trying to experiment with technology and techniques, we decided to conduct our own experiment. Diwali was near and what better way to experiment than to use the festival of lights?
The following brief was shared with our designers and an AI tool. Both were given the same time to share their output.
Here’s what the brief was:
Diwali is the festival of lights,
but inner light is what radiates outside.
How do we project our inner light to our surroundings
which can then reflect to the world outside?
The human drawings went through a few iterations and then came up with these images.
The AI tool also went through a few rounds of iterations and interpreted the brief thus.
A few differences immediately became stark. The images created by the AI tool were much sharper and appeared more finished. Those created by humans had more flow with multiple nuances that became evident only after you looked at them for a while.
As one of our senior designers said, “If you were to see a Van Gogh and not know who had designed it, you might think that it is just a vase with a few flowers. But the more you look at it, the more you see the mastery behind the painting”.
What AI can do
AI models can produce numerous possibilities. You can generate logo ideas, designs or artwork, even those involving content - all with a click of a button and in minutes. Did you know that Artificial intelligence can mimic creative thinking? And can often surpass a human designer in speed and optimization of a design.
What AI cannot do
Artificial Intelligence models produce digital art. They’re great at it. However, they can't quite work with other methods like oils, paints, or pastels as humans do. So, while technology may create newer options to work around, people often seem to circle back to the original methods. Or integrate the new with the old.
AI tools are more likely to act as work tools for artists rather than digital replacements for creative human artists. For example, AI may be able to generate a range of designs to begin with, which can later be selected by a human artist. This integrates the strength of AI, art models, human artists and overcomes any problems that may have been faced by both artists, i.e., AI and humans.
AI will always be limited, for the simple reason that its 'creativity' depends on prompts given by humans. This means that AI can only work with the data it receives, i.e., the data a human inputs into the system. While artists brainstorm, collaborate, and work together to build ideas, AI’s output will be dependent on the outcome of this brainstorming.
Artificial Intelligence may also not be able to demonstrate the emotional intelligence which is crucial while designing for brands. It’s extremely important for one to understand human behaviour and human experiences as they go a long way in creating designs and ads that people can relate to. Furthermore, design is always evolving and it would require a creative mind to move the industry forward and set trends. And for this, AI has the potential to uplift human designers by supplementing their skills and assisting them with AI.
In the end…
While we have a bunch of human designers that have done some exceptionally great work, we also need to understand the importance of teaming up with technology soon. Digital artists need to adopt AI models to help keep themselves up to date. While AI may not replace designers, it will surely become a design partner and a tool that our creative human designers can use, to make their lives easy and achieve something greater in the ever-evolving workplace called advertising.