In the fascinating collaboration The New Creatives: How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry author Seema Sharma provides a series of interviews with an artificial intelligence (AI) engine itself, delving deep into the realm of creative applications it can offer and the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent machines. Sharma goes beyond the typical fear-based discussions about AI replacing humans to instead demonstrate ways in which AI tools can augment and enhance human creativity, and where the pitfalls might lie. AI is useful for analyzing patterns in existing data, but what it produces is necessarily derivative or constrained by what it has learned from its inputs; such constraints include repeating biases in that material. AI can combine and remix elements upon command--but it can draw only on elements that already exist.
Sharma, an advertising agency creative director, explores case studies and examples in which AI has been used to generate ideas, inspire artists and writers, and even develop alongside humans in fields such as music composition, the visual arts, and storytelling. She engages her AI co-writer in discussions about the ethical implications of AI in creative industries, raising questions about authorship, authenticity, privacy, and the role of human intuition and awareness of context in innovative endeavors. She expresses an understandable concern about AI displacing human beings in artistic roles, while suggesting the optimistic spin that it will take over more mundane and replicable aspects of that work.
The New Creatives outlines timely and thought-provoking guidelines and considerations about how AI can augment human creativity in what might be termed the "symbiotic partnership." --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.