Does my voice matter in the age of AI?
It is all too easy to enter into that depressive state of mind where nothing matters. Especially if you’re a creative. That mindset can often convince us that what we have to say has already been said by 100 other people, so why even bother?
That feeling is only cemented into our way of life when we observe how AI is exponentially rising to the point of non-human involvement on the creative level. Posts we scroll, videos we watch and even the articles we read that sound extremely human, could all be robotically generated* based on what our personal marketing data has aggregated.
I used to work in an advertising agency as a graphic design pixel pusher. I have seen briefly behind the curtain of the so called “algorithmic wizard” and I have to say, more often than not, I didn’t like what I was seeing. On the surface our data is inconsequential. We trade our email for a free pdf, or even better, for 5% off that item we regret buying immediately after hitting “process payment”.
The tradeoff of our data, whether an email or interactions on specific, unmentioned platforms..cough, cough…is that we lose our ability to inform our lives. We become formed by the information and things spoon fed to us on a daily basis. I will take off my conspiracy hat for the remainder of this post, I swear.
I believe that in the age of AI, we are facing a critical decision point for us as individuals and as a society. Will we allow our time, focus and money to be continually drained or will we reach a breaking point and begin to rediscover what feelings, experiences and things make us feel human again? Is that new camera actually going to make me happy?
(Side note: if anyone wants to buy me a sony fx6 I would not be opposed…)
I’m not saying all advertising is bad (I would be out of a profession if I admitted that). I do think that there is a fine line that we in the marketing and creative spheres have to walk. We can’t just absent-mindedly push publish without thinking of the consequence of our actions. I’m not saying we need to hold the hand of everyone who interacts with our content, but we should consider how our content will affect our virtual neighbors.
How does AI play into this honest approach to marketing?
First, we have to determine to do good. That sounds like a no brainer, but I believe that most people, although they want to do good, can be selfish and desire instant gratification. We have to ask ourselves, “is what I’m creating with AI going to deceive or manipulate anyone?”
Story time! I recently had a conversation with an organization that wanted to take a photo of one of its founding members, who has been deceased for many years, and create a video of him welcoming people to an event. At first I explored the options and realized it was possible, quite easily in fact, to import a photo and with a few simple prompts, “resurrect” this man and have him say whatever I wanted. The conversation then quickly turned to, “should we do this?” It wasn’t until a sample was already made that the question was even thoroughly entertained.
AI will allow rash decisions to replace well thought out and intentional marketing efforts.
Instead of building teams of people, executives will find one guy to manage 15 different AI tools and assistants to create a horrifying excuse for a creative and human solution.
That may be a bit harsh. I am not totally against AI. I use AI as a tool to process more data and compute complex code that allows me to easily cut a podcast down in seconds. But I always review and make changes because it is an imperfect tool at best.
So where does that leave me with AI?
I plan to navigate these ideas with a set of rules:
I will continue to question my intentions every time I use AI, especially to make something easy or quick.
I will sieve new ideas through a compassionate lens. How am I affecting my neighbor? If someone would be negatively affected, it may not be worth doing just because I can.
How can I influence the future of this technology for the betterment of my fellow humans? Have the hard conversations and be open to learning new views.
I explore these themes in my current short film project, Fellowman, which is set to release early next year. Subscribe to my email list below, The Corner Booth, if you’d like to stay up to date on future blog posts and project updates!
*I promise this article has been written without the use of AI, under the supervision of our robot overlords.
