By Sheila Wambua
With an exasperated sigh heard at the end of the call, Joe Musyoki sinks into his office chair at home while clearing his throat and tells of his experience with the use of AI in the creative field as a professional Graphic Designer.
“Let’s just say I am focusing a bit more on AI, this thing can’t be ignored, either you learn it or you get left behind.” Joe Musyoki, who has decades of experience in the creative world, tells Involvement.
In the past 2 years, AI has gotten a major traction, with famous works like AI-powered portraits that are hanged in the museum, to the vast amounts of data AI has.
“I am also learning it on the side, it especially helps me when coming up with copy for poster etc., I suck at writing copies.”
Burnouts are sadly way too common especially in the creative field. This is commonly seen when deadlines pile up and you run out of inspiration or get too tired to work on any more
projects. AI tools would be helpful because it would help people to relieve some of the pressure mentally.
Many of the creative works released on social media today have subtle traces of AI in them. Whether its AI-assisted storytelling, AI prompts on the posters or used in designing a product to AI written projects. Use of AI generators such as MidJourney and Zapier make work easier for the graphic and product Designers. One click is all it takes to compose an illustration which would have taken you hours to sketch out and illustrate on the software. For some, it is a miracle come true, but to others it is a double edged sword.
“As a designer you have to use it to your advantage, and it’s already replacing some of us. A rough example is the illustrators, honestly I don’t feel very comfortable right now, I need to find other ways to make money other than design.”
There have been a lot of cases whereby, in an art competition, some competitors would hand in their projects only for it to later be recognized as AI. The AI is already being utilized in place of real professional talent which has taken years to cultivate. Many professionals would cry out that it is foul play for someone to use AI when they themselves had to put in blood, sweat, and tears in their work.
But is it really foul play to use AI when one of the standards required is a deep understanding and refinement of how to use the AI prompts?
Elsewhere, Brian Leonard, a Kenyan Graphic designer with Lenny Arts in Nairobi, tells The Star that, “The integration of AI to my workflow has been a great thing! I’m able to put out so much more accurate, near-perfect work with the same energy as I would back before AI. I’m able to come up with awesome scripts as if it’s something I would have done for a very long time.”
The problem however comes in with the copyright issue. If an artist uses AI to generate a photo, are they allowed to claim it as their own, or is it the machines? Who really gets to “own” it? Who gets to claim that they “made” it?
If you guide the AI with your imagination, refine the outputs, and curate the result, then are you still the artist? The AI could be your assistant, not your replacement.
“While AI is both interesting and also a bit scary especially in copywriting, there is a lot of learning that can be got from AI and that AI will also benefit from a human hand.” Leonard Dzoga informs the Newsroom.
Based on the opinions expressed by the professionals in the creative industry, we should expect AI to play a bigger role in the future as it keeps on advancing. It is the reality of how things will unfold, and anyone who wishes to stay relevant in their line of work, has to learn to adapt. AI on its own is not creative, but is a useful assistant if used wisely.