The Dead Creativity Theory
Can we outsource creativity to AI?
Hello and welcome!
A few weeks ago, an online discussion with
, sparked some thoughts that I would like to share.
Are we heading toward a dystopia? Is Technology the cause of it?
Imagine a world, were most of what you read, watch, admire and even the discussions you follow have been “generated” rather then crafted by a human…
I bet that didn’t need much imagination.
The “Dead Internet Theory” is a conspiracy theory that stipulates that most of the online content is artificially created, and according to the originators, aiming to manipulate us (which explains the “conspiracy” label).
No need to put on a tinfoil hat to notice that the boom of “Generative AI” led to an increase in Artificial content, and more sophisticated bots and scams. We probably all felt the so called “Enshittification” - a decrease over time in the quality and experience of online platforms with the ads, the bots, the rising costs and now the AI slop…
Ghibblerish
On Mars 25th Open AI released “4o image generation” creating yet another AI frenzy. People all around the world started turning memes, famous images, or themselves into different art styles. Ironically the most popular trend was to use the style of Ghibli, the studio from Hayao Miyazaki which happened to be a fervent opponent of AI technology in art.
Did AI master art? Is human creativity a lost cause?
A small experiment
Each year I do a small test - I ask Open AI’s image creation tool (Dall-E and now 4o) “An agile team” with no further prompting and always taking the first image given with no tweaks.
2023: (What is that monstrosity)
2024: (Where is everyone looking?)
2025: (Don’t look at the hands)
The progress is undeniable, yet a problem emerges…
It is not the hands - Open AI even provides tools to edit with AI; the issue is that a generic input will never give me a creative output.
What about asking AI to be creative?
That gives more interesting results, but the images still contains the same elements, (e.g. a board, the word Agile, a diverse group, the same colors…)
Phew! Artists are safe, only creative people will be able to produce anything interesting with AI, it is a tool and will always bound to the creativity and intentions of the human author…
… Or not really?
Our bias against AI
I’m fascinated by how our perception changes our internal experience.
For example 🔍a study found that tasting a wine from an expensive bottle will genuinely feel better than the same wine in a more generic bottle.
You are not only saying that it was a better wine, your brain actually felt more pleasure!
Similarly, knowing an output was generated by AI, reduces the value and creativity we ascribe to it. The stronger we believe that creativity is a pure human feat, the more our judgment of the AI creativity drops 🔍.
Objectively, last years models where already outperforming human on “diverging task” (e.g. coming up with multiple use for an object), and on-par with humans on many creative tasks 🔍.
AI is becoming better at “generalizing”, solving never encountered problems and going beyond human capabilities, we have now Nobel prizes being awarded for AI development, and even the first peer-reviewed research paper entirely produced by ai 🔍,
Despite today’s shortcoming of the image generators, humans have a worthy challenger in the various aspects of creativity.
The Dead Creativity Theory
We may be just at the beginning, but our increasing reliance on AI for creativity is worrisome.
First there is the ethical concerns with AIs being trained on artists material without their consent.
Then there is the fact that creativity is a muscle, and the more we outsource to AI, the weaker we get.
Finally, in creative works, we can catch a glimpses of the creator’s history, personality or emotions, but with AI that glimpse is faked, and buried in the mix and match of references.
A world with less and less human expression will be a sad one to live in.
Another path
Creativity is how we stay relevant in an AI world, both if we choose to avoid it all together or choose to integrate it in some workflows.
Nobody wants to chew on plastic instead of real food.
If you need a quick illustration, why not draw something? You will benefit from the creative exercise and even a stick figure drawing will be more relatable than a random AI generation.
Being mindful of the artists is another imperative and still not sorted out both in terms of laws and social behaviors.
Loosing our ability to do mental calculation because of calculators was acceptable. Loosing our ability to be creative goes deeper touching what it means to be human.
There would be much more to discuss on the topic of A.I. but let's do so in the comments👇,
What are you thoughts on AI creativity?
Next we will go back to the visual book summaries, with “The Geek Way” by Andrew McAfee.
Oh and do go check
’s substack, there is always thoughtful posts around visual thinking and how to use it as a collaboration tool.Thanks for reading until here, and looking forward to hear from you!
Great perspective. Especially love the fancy wine example. I think over time, human generated efforts will be synonymous with “hand crafted” or artisanal works. We can look to that category for what is to come
Hi Lud! I’m late for the party but I can’t refrain myself from leaving a note here. Dealing with AI is a big part of my job and I have conflicting emotions. I try to distill my take about AI and creativity in a few sentences.
I believe the overuse of AI in the creative field is dictated by the "market request", and with market I mean also the niches where individuals act at personal level. It all boils down to quantity vs quality and the always overlooked concept of "enough".
The fight out there is on quantity rather the quality, I can create a lot of technically good enough yet emotionally flat contents because AI allow me to do that at close-to-zero cost and time, so, I can establish a "presence", the more hulking I get, the higher the chances people clicks on my contents. And that’s it, I don’t care if people read my contents, I just need followers, like etc.
Not long ago I used to metaphor in a workshop: AI is like a coloring book, no matter how good you are with colors and shadows, someone else did the drawing, not you.
A Creative person can and must use creativity to make the most of AI in assisting his process, the moment AI overlaps and control that process, the real creativity is gone.
And overindulgence is around the corner.
Just my 2c.
Thank you for sharing Lud.