Not long ago, creativity was seen as the final frontier of human endeavour – the one thing machines could never replicate. Imagination, intuition, emotional depth: surely these were uniquely human traits?
But now, generative AI tools are writing poetry, composing film scores, and designing entire ad campaigns. The question many are now asking isn’t can AI be creative – but should it?
Imitation Games
AI doesn’t create in the way humans do. It works by detecting patterns in vast datasets – millions of images, stories, songs, and sentences – then predicting what comes next. When ChatGPT pens a story or Midjourney creates an image, it’s not conjuring something from a muse-like well of inspiration. It’s predicting the statistically probable.
”AI doesn’t innovate, it interpolates”
says Dr Emily Zhao, a psychologist at the University of Oxford
Who studies the intersection of cognition and machine learning. Her recent study found that audiences consistently described AI-generated artworks as “technically impressive but emotionally flat.”
The creative outputs, she argues, often reflect a kind of glossy sameness. “It’s derivative by design. That’s not always a bad thing – but it does raise questions about authenticity.”
Convenience or Conformity?
For some, the concern is that AI isn’t just mimicking creativity – it’s flattening it. When everyone has access to the same tools, trained on the same data, does originality suffer?
“There’s an aesthetic convergence happening,” says Dave Holston, a creative director who now consults on AI ethics in design. “You can feel it in the branding world already. Logos, headlines, even moodboards – it’s all starting to look the same.” Especially at the beginning of the AI movement the same phrases, wording and formats have been used.
Holston worries that the pressure to produce quickly – and the temptation to lean too heavily on AI – risks reducing creativity to a kind of algorithmic box-ticking. “It’s efficient. But it’s also sterile.” This is especially true for marketeres like myself, who have often a set of criterias to meet, for example in order to rank on Google – however this has always been the case and now machine learn learning can be trained to carry this out.
A New Kind of Collaborator
Still, not everyone is mourning the death of the artist. For many writers, designers, and marketers, AI is being embraced as a time-saving ally – a brainstorm partner, not a replacement. Jarvis Cocker, from Pulp, recently admitted that writers block ‘led the band to grind to a halt’ and for 20 years havn’t released an album – could AI have helped?
“AI isn’t replacing creativity. It’s replacing the blank page”
says Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer at Adobe. Speaking at Adobe MAX in 2024, Belsky described AI as a tool to “free creatives from the mundane,” allowing them to focus on ideas, not iterations.
This mirrors a broader trend: AI as an assistant, not auteur. The filmmaker using AI to storyboard a script. The fashion designer prototyping concepts in seconds. The Jarvis Coker’s using ChatGPT to break writer’s block.
A Shift in the Creative Contract
There is precedent for this kind of upheaval. The invention of the camera forced painters to rethink realism. Sampling revolutionised music. The arrival of Photoshop sparked debates about photographic truth. Every technological leap has reshaped what we mean by “creative work” – and who gets to do it.
Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired, argues that AI is simply the next evolution. “Creativity is combinatorial,” he writes. “AI just lets us combine faster.”
But that shift comes with consequences. If everyone is a creator, what happens to craft? If machines can mimic our styles, what value do we place on authorship?
So, Is AI Killing Creativity?
The truth is more complicated – and more interesting – than a simple yes or no. AI is undeniably changing the way we create. It’s democratising access, accelerating output, and reshaping workflows. But it’s also raising urgent questions about originality, meaning, and value.
Perhaps, as with previous revolutions, the artists and thinkers who adapt – who use these tools to push boundaries rather than replicate them – will define what creativity looks like in the AI age.
Because if creativity is just about producing content, the machines may already have us beat. But if it’s about making meaning, asking questions, or challenging norms – then the most human parts of creativity may be more essential than ever.
Max Letek is a Writer, AI, AIO and SEO expert at Media-M
