Is AI Coming for ALL of Us Creatives?

Forget the hypothetical, here's a practical real-world example that might scare the heck out of you.

Years ago, while working with a Silicon Valley tech client on a trade show graphic project, the following request was presented:

Client: “We want you to create a photo composited scenes of a bunch of humans laying around in an open park, celebrating the wonders of life, while robotic machines do all the work of the humans.”

When I presented the project to one of my best illustrators, I said to him, “have you ever heard of anything like this?” I’ll never forget his answer.

“Only in horror films!”

That was 12 years ago.

Long before we knew about or had our first glimpse at AI.

Since then, AI has erupted, and I have been a part of all of it.

From becoming a top-writer in AI on Midjourney, to creating UDEMY course, to starting one of the first AI Modelings in history, to video editing of movie trailers, and now music videos, I’ve strived to be on the forefront of the tech.

But I focus on how to enhance MY abilities and my creativity, and not merely to push a button and let the system do ALL the work for me.

I recently wrote a note on Substack:

“AI shouldn’t REPLACE your creativity.

AI should speed up processes in your life, so you have MORE TIME to BE CREATIVE.”

But will there be anything creative left?

That was the answer I had to ask, when I heard about the latest version of INVIDEO AI during a YOUTUBE strategic search.

I purchased INVIDEO almost 18 months ago, when it was just a “stock video compiler.” I find it to be incredibly basic. While Midjourney might be a 9 out of 10 on the photo generation side, INVIDEO was probably a 2 out of 10 for quality video generation.

Bottom line, it usually saved me about 40% of the time of a typical video editing project, since I was able to use portions of the video to generate my own work.

I hadn’t considered the platform much since.

Three days ago, on a quiet Thanksgiving afternoon, I used 8 different AI platforms and created my first AI Music Video, based on my song GLASS HOUSE. I detail the full story if you want to click here.

Long story short, here is the last chorus of the AI Music Video

This isn’t meant to be 100% photorealistic, but let’s consider that if it was shot in a traditional video shoot, it would likely to have been between 12-15 Million dollars of destruction, let alone the cost of the actual film production, set decoration, production crew, etc.

Bottom line, for about six hours of work, and about $5 in generation cost, I did what would have taken weeks, millions of dollars, and produced certain scenes that could never have been produced.

Maybe it could have been done, without destruction to physical property, using CGI technology for say, a quarter of the cost, but AI has opened up arenas that were simply not there in the past.

But bottom line, the creation of this music video was fun. I enjoyed the process. I was able to USE AI to amplify my creative abilities. I created the fifteen or so scenes, plotted the script, and felt like I was part of the creative process.

INVIDEO AI may be changing that.

Here’s the video that was created in just ten lines of text, based on the same end chorus.

Yeah, she’s scary. And maybe that is the point. What is “scary” is the fact, that all the creativity that I put into my video: generating images, coming up with the concepts, generating the 5 second videos and putting it all together in Adobe Premiere, was taken from me.

Such could be said by the musicians, art directors, studio set designers, grips, dolly people, videographers, video editors - that I replaced using AI for my first video.

The difference is that I was still part of the process. With this video, I simply typed in ten lines of text.

Is the quality there in the INVIDEO film? The INVIDEO version looks more “realistic” than my video. But the “quality” and “intrigue” of my video is far more powerful, in my humble opinion. For example, here is the font in my title:

Note the uniqueness of the font, which helps to tell the story of the song. My video looks “designed.” It certainly has more of a “soul” than the INVIDEO VERSION’s font choice.

I know that what I created is far less cold and sterile than this INVIDEO generation. But this is just INVIDEO’s first launch. What is to say that two months from now, AI “learns” better and replaces all my creative abilities?

Remember, this bottom video was created using just 10 lines of text.

In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo that the “machines” used humans as nothing more than human batteries.

What is to say that all of creativity is eventually replaced by a few lines of sterile prompts on a keyboard.

I used to say of Hollywood: “What will Hollywood do, when Post Apocalyptic films become passe?”

I could now say, what will humanity do, with CREATIVITY becomes passe?

Sadly, maybe we can combine both questions. I don’t want to think about that.

The Bottom Line

Going back to that original request I got from that tech company over a decade ago, maybe it really is the depiction of a horror film. While automation can release us from many burdens, fully automating creativity turns what makes us unique as humans… into… well, I don’t want to go there.

Let me just say, that, as a creative, I don’t want to be the one sitting in the open park while everything is being done for me.

Because the true horror for the creative isn’t the automation, it is the impending apathy.