{"id":4269725,"date":"2021-04-01T13:12:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T11:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/insight\/will-ai-replace-human-creativity\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T13:42:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T11:42:55","slug":"will-ai-replace-human-creativity","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/en-au\/insight\/will-ai-replace-human-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Will AI replace human creativity?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\n\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tBack to all articles\t\t<\/span>\n\t\n<\/button>\n\t\tWill AI replace human creativity?\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/picture>\n\t\n\t<\/div>
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\n\t\tSteven Denekas\t\t
\n\t\tGlobal SVP of Experience at DEPT\u00ae\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t1 April 2021\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\tOne of the hot topics at SxSW this year is Artificial Intelligence and its impact on humans, society and work. Deep learning evolved so fast the past year that there are numerous new applications and tools arising that benefit from and use this new technology. In the panel discussion, \u2018AI the future of storytelling, \u2018AI the future of storytelling<\/a>\u2018, industry leaders discussed their take on the topic.\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\t\tOne of the most interesting stories around AI is the\u00a0Portrait of Edmond Belamy<\/a>, which was recently sold at Christie\u2019s for 432,000 dollars. The painting, however, is not the product of a human painter. Its creator is the following algorithm:\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tThis raises an interesting question of how AI will impact creative work in the future and how the work of creatives will change.
\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tWhat is AI already capable of?\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\t\tThis development not only impacts visual art but also written words and music. In February 2019 Open AI released\u00a0work samples<\/a>\u00a0that show computer-generated texts about a topic of your choosing. The sentences don\u2019t sound perfect right now, but the implications for the future are huge. Douglas Eck, who\u2019s a Principal Scientist at Google working in the areas of music, art and machine learning believes that in less than five years the technology will be sophisticated enough that students will no longer need to write essays on their own anymore. Just a few headlines, the right set of data and the AI will do the rest.\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tThe Google\u00a0Magenta<\/a>\u00a0research project aims to push the limits of what AI can do in the arts, with a focus on music. Their algorithm Performance RNN is trained on classical music and writes its own piano pieces \u2013 listen to a piece it wrote\u00a0here<\/a>. And if you want to discover the possibilities of AI in music you should definitely play around with the\u00a0web-based applications<\/a>\u00a0you can find on Magenta. A personal favourite is the\u00a0piano genie<\/a>, which creates basic chords changes while you\u2019re just pressing random buttons.\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tHeather Smith and her company\u00a0Storyfile<\/a>\u00a0together with the\u00a0USC Shoah Foundation<\/a>\u00a0used AI to preserve history. Using big data, they recreated the experience of having a one-on-one conversation with someone who lived through the Holocaust via a hologram. They managed this feat by compiling footage collected over a period of five days while filming for 25 hours to collect the answers to over 2,000 questions. Language processing makes it possible to create an interactive hologram and immersive experience. Take a look at New Dimensions of Testimony\u00a0here<\/a>.
\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tMoreover, there are already cases where AI plays a vital role in the creation of a marketing campaign. In 2017 Nutella and their agency Ogilvy & Mather Italia created seven million unique jars with the help of an algorithm and sold them throughout Italy. At first, this sounds like an amazing idea and the\u00a0jars<\/a>\u00a0looked quite nice \u2013 but that\u2019s just the ones they used to build their case. There were also a few not so successful \u201cugly jars<\/a>\u201d found on supermarket shelves when Nutella attempted to adapt that campaign for Germany.
\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tAnother interesting case is the AI scripted commercial for Lexus. For\u00a0this video ad<\/a>, their creative agency\u00a0The & Partnership London<\/a>, along with technical partner\u00a0Visual Voice<\/a>\u00a0worked with the IBM Watson team to analyse fifteen years\u2019 worth of footage, text and audio for award-winning car and luxury brand campaigns. But it\u2019s not like AI did all the work. It identified the key elements labelled as \u201cemotionally intelligent and entertaining\u201d, formed the script flow and outline, which the agency then used to form the story.\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tWill all creatives be out of work?\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\t\tThe Nutella example already highlights one of the biggest downsides to AI, which is that it will never be able to truly choose. What you put in, you get out is how Heather Smith puts it. This means that AI heavily relies on the data set it is given by humans and can only create new things relative to this data. Lance Weiler, who\u2019s a founding member and director of the Columbia University School of the Art\u2019s Digital Storytelling Lab, says the creative work of AI follows the rules of sampling with an uncertain outcome. To ensure good results it always has to be curated by a human. Also, the example of the Lexus commercial shows no real surprises. It\u2019s a typical car commercial which hardly differs from any man-made advertisement.\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tWrap up\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\t\tThe role of AI in our daily life will definitely increase in the future, but that\u2019s nothing to be afraid of. It\u2019s a new tool which can help us process large amounts of data, give inspiration and take care of boring tasks. But we need to learn how to harness it. Like the invention of cameras and electric guitars, it will change the possibilities of creativity and create new possibilities. But in the end, it won\u2019t work without human assistance and it can never create something truly new.\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t