As the founder of PosterSpy.com and someone who has been creating artwork and working with artists for over 15 years, it’s wild to see how AI has developed this year.
AI can now write for us, create art for us and even programme for us, but at what cost?
Companies are touting AI as the next best thing, Linkedin is absolutely plagued with art directors sharing their Midjourney concepts, praising its unique take on brand design.
Personally, I think all of these ideas are remarkably dull. But people seem to love them, is it just because it’s AI? Not sure. These AI designs always seem to be shared by “Creative Thinkers” and “Problem Solvers” – I guess anyone can solve a problem if you just let AI do it.
But let’s be real for a minute.
There are only two main reasons to use AI, to speed up the creative process and to avoid paying someone else to do it.
Most of the designs seen above could be done in a day if you asked a photographer, concept artist or illustrator. The work would probably be a lot better if we asked real people. Is this kind of work so urgent that we have to bypass human beings and rely on AI?
When AI was first introduced, it was promoted as a tool to save us time from the mundane and tedious parts of the 9-5, enabling us to be more creative and experimental.
Yet, AI has taken that away, we’re now using AI to be creative.
We’re using ChatGPT to write social media content and even sales pitches, and for many companies, this has become the norm.
But at what cost? The cost of living in 2023 is at a new high, freelancers are experiencing a huge drop in work and companies are scaling back their workforce.
I recently had a coffee with a friend who knows a copywriter. For this story, I’ll call her Anne. Anna was recently made redundant at her company, they had three copywriters, and two of three have since been laid off. The company explained that “your work is being given to one copywriter” – Anne explained to my friend that it’s impossible for one person to do the job of three. Is her company utilising AI? I can’t say for sure, but Anne seems to think so. And this pattern is becoming scarily common.
We also had the recent MCU backlash due to the AI sequence used in Secret Invasion – the director tried to defend this but at the same time displayed a complete lack of understanding about how AI actually works. (and at the cost of what jobs).
Artist Matt Taylor posted this comparison on Twitter that shows the difference between the art team on Secret Invasion vs another Marvel title.
"But eight people worked on that sequence so it doesn't cost jobs"
— Matt Taylor (@MattTaylorDraws) June 22, 2023
Here's a side by side comparison for Secret Invasion and Ms Marvel's credit sequences. I've worked on these projects, i know how many people are involved. It's usually more than EIGHT.#SecretInvasion pic.twitter.com/pKhHH4zeQx
Clearly, companies are using AI to avoid spending money on talented people, and quite frankly I’m sick of people trying to defend AI and say “But it’s good it saves so much time” – we can all agree it saves time, but what we’re losing is the human touch, something that makes work stand out in the first place.
Companies are choosing to bypass people, which means the average working person is suffering. We live in a society that works on trade, time = money. And it’s clear that companies are exploiting that to save both.
