Are ya done with the AI hype cycle yet? Business sure is not. The stock market is not. Heck, even the governments are trying to align to harness the power of *ai* before our ability to control and contain *ai* is lost forever. Some see a Terminator future. Some see Blade Runner. I see something more like the first season of Altered Carbon. The *ai* Poe was the star of the entire show, in my opinion. But, I digress.

RE:Think Creativity

I am going to give it to you straight. AI is not creative. Nope. Not even the generative art side of *ai*. Not creative.

Creativity, in my definition, requires human emotion, human experience, human culture, that comes out in a poem, a short story, or a song. Painting and art are not a mere act of putting in a clever prompt and reswizzling the results until you have *art*. It’s not art. Let’s not call it art. Let’s call it GRAPHICS. You know a job title that is under severe pressure from *ai*? Graphic designer. Another one, copywriter. Finally, in a soft swat at a previous dumbass job, middle managers with *zero technical skills* are toast. We don’t need you. We didn’t need you. And now, it’s clear, your career path options are limited by the breadth of your bravado and the depth of your actual skills.

If you’re creative you may be experiencing a moment with *ai*. A moment of doubt. A moment of “I can do *ai* art better than the average prompt pilot. Also, if you’re a creative, you’ve probably given up any hope of making a living from your art. Perhaps that’s healthy. It’s a shame the streaming services sucked all the revenue out of the non-Taylor-Swift artists. It must be hard being a hot female singer trying to find coverage amidst the TayTayTakeover. (Hell yes, let’s give her more money by streaming her concert video.)

The catchphrase we’ve all been using in our PowerPoint presentations trying to explain *ai* and why it’s good and not evil:

AI is not coming for your job.
Someone who knows how to use AI might be.

How cute and pithy this statement was in October when my middle manager decided he’d had enough of my internal company awards and new projects stretching beyond his purview. Oops.

How AI Fits Into the Creative Life

AI is here. The investments and tech sprint to dominance is breathtaking. I hope you bet on the sand (Nvidia and AMD) rather than the tech. I also hope an open-source version of *ai* gains some traction. Not the kind that Zuck and Co and Mr. Musk talk about. Their “open source” *ai* is more of a defensive move. Kind of like Mark deriding the Apple Vision Pro before he understand that his metaverse just got upended for good. (Not unlike the launch of the first iPhone, as Samsun and Nokia laughed. “Late to the party. Nothing to offer.”)

What you’ve got to do is start building a relationship with the AI of your choice. I’ve been trending toward plexit.ai, my favorite Google-Search-Killer. What we are at risk of losing, however, as mega-tech companies are able to dominate, monetize, and control AI systems and platforms, is a free market for *ai* that is NOT Apple, AWS, Google, OpenAi, Microsoft. What we need is time to get to know how one *ai* is different from the others. Develop a rapport with Dall-e for example. Learn the nuance of “in the style of” prompts. Learn new ways of texting your way into Picasso-esque imagery.

But, understand this. You are not Picasso. No prompt pilot is an artist simply by being clever. Perhaps they are AI Designers. Prompt Artists. But, *ai* is a mimic. Even AI admits this if you dig deep enough. .

As a writer, I have enjoyed teasing first ChatGPT, then Claude, and now Perplexity about poetry. Why poetry? Because there is no pattern matching in actual human poetry. Well, modern poetry, is also known as “free verse.” But you know what ChatGPT and the others don’t understand?

Poetry ≠ Rhyme

Free Verse = No Rhyme

So, for my first parlor trick, I kept trying to “train” ChatGPT about “free verse.” I found my excursions into ai poetry as fascinating as frustrating.

Here’s what’s happening. AI does not create any new thoughts or ideas. AI merely reswizzles what has already been written (or painted) into a new series of patterns. Its “next best word” poetry is not poetry. AI’s thin veil of “in the style of Jack Kerouac” for example, is fair at mimickery. But, I promise you, not one original thought. Maybe a freakish word-jam mistake that looks like poetry, but it’s not.

reswizzle – definition
how *ai* takes previous art or words and reblends the pixels and letters into altered pixels and letters. Like ingredients in a blender.

The Great AI Swindle

Maybe the biggest threat by *ai* is how the companies are going to own all of the IP. BUT… and this is going to be litigated biggly soon: AI art and AI copy is not protected by copyright law. None of it.

Reuse at will. Therefore, any art you see created with *ai*, go ahead, put it on a poster, a t-shirt, sell it as your own, create your own genius *ai* brand. But if I like it, or Walmart or China-e-commerce site likes it, well, your profits may vary. But you’re not going to be able to protect your prompt art, your prompt copy, or your prompt music. It’s not human. Your AI-prompted art is not art. It’s just mimicry of art.

The big boys are playing for keeps with AI. Make no mistake about it. Apple isn’t releasing their *ai* takeover plans just yet, but they too will become part of the CORPORATE AI that is going to wreck the potential for the rest of us. Look at ai-generated social media posts? They are dumb. They are hard to see as fake. They lie. They make promises. They give testimonials, and they are not real. They have never read a word of my writing, my poetry, or my music. Yet, here is a young woman talking about my latest intro to “how to write human poetry.” Points taken for the irony here.

AI disrupted my career and set me on a new path, with even more AI. How fun. AI is going to change everything we know about work. “Prompt Engineer” sounds like an interesting job, but it’s literally talking to ChatGPT all day, every day, trying to make it more human-like. It is a burnout job, not an aspirational use of your creativity or talent.

Learn how *ai* can enable your creative process as a human. Get out your guitar, your paints, and your pen. Start creating more HUMAN ART. That’s the only way we humans win.

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
LinkedIn or Iterativ.ai

*image prompt “liminal space impressionist drawing birds eye view of an abandoned library with very high ceilings and birds and clouds and stained glass windows, and an array of discarded books on the floor, subject is a young man studying at a table with red headphones on and mirrored sunglasses”

[Note: through sharing my prompts I am training you, dear reader, to use some of my generative ai tricks. My favorite is “liminal space” and “birds eye view.” Happy generating.]

A few of my creative ai motions:

• waltwhitman.ai < a book of “whitmanesque poetry” with zero AI
• Radio No Head < *ai* parsed music for you to sing and dream with
• poətic.com < my page about the ai poetry conundrum
• hyper-soul < the science fiction exploration and world-building project
• clickthis.ai < my team for *ai* marketing and sales acceleration