Does AI Dumb Down Creativity?
Over-Reliance on AI in the Creative Process Leads to Creative Atrophy & the Mundane
Welcome to my “brAIn” dump, St. Patty’s Day edition! My “mAIn event” features my musings about generative AI used as a creative tool, rather than as a “Creator” itself. It’s an important piece that lays out my fundamental argument that only human-led creativity can lead to Art that is truly “original” and groundbreaking. Then, it’s the “AI Litigation Tracker” — updates on key GenAI/media cases by Partner Avery Williams of McKool Smith (you can also access the full “Tracker” here via this link).
I. The mAIn Event - AI’s Dumbing Down of Creativity
What Does “Dorian Gray” Have to Do With It?
Last week, I saw (more like, “experienced”) the truly amazing new production of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” on Broadway, starring “Succession’s” Sarah Snook (who gives a truly awe-inspiring performance). It’s a “must see” show that breaks new creative ground (but it’s best experienced if you know nothing about the production itself). For purposes of this article, all you need to know is that AI presents itself in, and elevates, the show. In fact, multiple forms of technology come together — under the director’s creative vision and watchful eye — to transform the production into something entirely fresh and original, without overwhelming it. After all, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet would say, “The play’s the thing!”
Snook’s “Dorian Gray” serves as the perfect metaphor for how to think about AI’s role in the creative process. AI is a new tool that can help unlock new original creative possibilities. But AI — left to its own devices — can break no new creative ground. True “originality” only flows from the human mind that divines and then crafts the Art. What I saw on stage in New York could never have been conceived by AI alone — or by human artistic over-reliance on it.
The Essence of Art Is the Human Condition
First, let’s state the obvious. The essence of truly “original” Art is the human condition. So definitionally, because AI alone can never truly understand human experience — including the precise state of the Artist’s mind and soul in the moment of creation (and a human audience’s reaction to that Art) — AI alone can’t break new truly “original” creative ground.
To Err is Human (& Human Creativity is Divine)
That “truth” of humanity goes even deeper — to something that AI can never understand because it’s simply not built that way. Human creativity cannot be surpassed by AI-driven creativity, precisely because of humanity’s flaws. Its mistakes. Those “incorrect” elements that give human works their soul, the connection to us all who are flawed and fallible. Yes, machines make mistakes too — hallucinations. But Big Tech seeks to “program out” those hallucinations in its quest for AI perfection. With human creativity, perfection is not necessarily the end goal. In fact, it may be anathema to it.
Famed music producer Rick Rubin underscores that point in his recent book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.” Rubin’s punchline is that a truly original and lasting creative work isn’t finished when it has five mistakes. It’s finished when it has eight. In other words, the human creative act’s lack of perfection is precisely what makes it resonate so perfectly.
“Originality” Frequently Takes Hard Work
The New York Times’ brilliant Ezra Klein talks of something even deeper still. In one podcast episode, he points out that making truly groundbreaking Art is frequently not “easy.” It’s messy and “hard.” And it is precisely that creative hard work — those artistic micro-decisions and micro-journeys every step of the way in the creative process — that leads to the deepest level of thought, soul, and breakthrough “originality” (rather than AI’s less noble and divine achievement of “novelty”). In Klein’s view, AI-fueled creative shortcuts and over-dependence can short circuit true creativity — and lead to creative atrophy.
Think of it this way. Automation transformed air travel, including piloting itself (much for the better). But there’s been a body of research that shows that pilots’ increasing dependence on automation actually leads to the atrophying of their piloting skills and human judgment — frequently to dangerous and tragic effect. It’s what AI writer and philosopher Michael Ashley calls “cognitive diminishment” — a form of “use it, or lose it.” And if artists “lose it” via over-reliance on AI and generative AI tools, their creative minds (and the creative works that flow from them) suffer.
AI Simulation Is Not the Same as Artistic Creation
Even leading AI tech leaders like Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, underscore that LLMs lack “true creativity” as they mash together what’s in their training data sets — including reams of copyrighted works via direct scraping or “classic pirate sites,” as exposed in an important new report by Thomas Heldrup of the Danish Rights Alliance. Hassabis points out that the current crop of LLMs reflect “interpellation” — what Heldrup says “is just an averaging of what the model has seen in training data.” Meanwhile, Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, calls AI base LLM models “internet document simulators” that simply recreate text and visuals from websites they have scraped.
That isn’t true “creativity” — as in, the creation of truly “original” creative works. That is creative simulation. Yes, those AI minds can create something “novel” — as in, something that is “new” and not an exact replica of anything in the past. But “novelty” is not the same thing as “originality” — the kind of breakthrough Art led and driven by human creative minds in the new production of “Dorian Gray.”
AI As a “Tool” of Inclusion in the Creative Process
I recently featured a guest article by Andy Beach, former CTO of Microsoft and a leading voice in AI and entertainment. In that post, Andy asks us to “imagine a media industry where AI does not replace creativity but enhances it.” He gives several examples of what he has in mind, all of which fall into the “Dorian Gray” camp of humans using AI as a “tool” in the creative process:
Pre-Production: AI tools can streamline storyboarding, location scouting, and script revisions, leaving writers and directors free to refine their vision.
Production: AI can optimize scheduling, lighting setups, and even on-set logistics, giving crews more flexibility to experiment and innovate.
Post-Production: AI can automate repetitive tasks like rotoscoping and initial color grading, allowing editors and artists to focus on the creative, high-impact work.
Global Distribution: AI can enable smarter localization of content, delivering culturally nuanced translations without replacing the local creatives who understand their audiences best.
Andy underscores that these AI tools exist today, but “they are not being used to empower creatives — they are being used to cut corners” (including, and perhaps especially, human headcount).
AI Can Help Bridge the Accessibility Gap
But Andy points out that not every use of AI threatens creative jobs. In some cases, “it fills critical gaps where human resources fall short.” He points out that “there’s more content being created than there are interpreters, voice actors, or announcers to make it accessible to global audiences. Live events and regional programming often go untranslated or are only captioned for the highest-value markets, leaving vast swaths of audiences underserved.” This is where AI becomes a tool — a tool of inclusion.
Real-time captioning, dubbing, and translation AI tools don’t reduce jobs, in Andy’s view. They make it possible for more people to experience and share in human stories that might otherwise remain inaccessible. AI fills what he calls, a “caption gap,” enabling “smaller creators to reach global audiences and allowing regional stories to cross borders without the prohibitive cost of human localization. Legacy content that has been hidden away for decades can be brought back to its audience with tools that make it consistent with today’s formats and needs. Instead of limiting access, AI expands it, leveling the playing field and making the media landscape more inclusive.”
It’s Not About Rejecting AI — It’s About Rejecting Over-Dependence on AI
Andy’s points are well-taken. But to be clear, over-dependence on AI in the creative process risks an overall “dumbing down” of Art — an accelerated race to the most common denominator and, in turn, to the mundane. AI-driven works may be “good enough” to be creative comfort food. But only the human creative chef can create a truly revolutionary new experience.
So yes, we have reached an inflection point in the creative community that is both exciting and terrifying. But perhaps we can take solace in the fact that human creativity — the ingredients of which can never be entirely known or understood — cannot be precisely replicated for that very reason. We are not algorithms. We are human beings. And only we can fully and completely communicate in ways that touch each other’s fallible souls, ultimately connecting in ways that frequently cannot be explained.
That’s the power of Sarah Snook in the fantastic new production of “Dorian Gray,” where no two performances are ever the same. That’s the power of great music and cinema. That’s the power of great Art.
Listen to a smart, insightful and entertaining podcast discussion of my article that I generated using Google NotebookLM. I listened to the full episode and approve its content.
(For those of you interested in learning more or exploring AI licensing opportunities, reach out to me at peter@creativemedia.biz).
II. AI Litigation Tracker: Updates on Key Generative AI/Media Cases (by McKool Smith)
Partner Avery Williams and the team at McKool Smith (named “Plaintiff IP Firm of the Year” by The National Law Journal) lay out the facts of — and latest critical developments in — the key generative AI/media litigation cases listed below. All those detailed updates can be accessed via this link to the “AI Litigation Tracker”.
(1) Kadrey v. Meta
(2) Brave Software v. News Corp.
(3) The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI
(4) In re OpenAI Litigation (class action)
(5) Dow Jones, et al. v. Perplexity AI
(6) UMG Recordings v. Suno
(7) UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
(8) Getty Images v. Stability AI and Midjourney
(9) Universal Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
(10) Sarah Anderson v. Stability AI
(11) Raw Story Media v. OpenAI
(12) The Center for Investigative Reporting v. OpenAI
(13) Authors Guild et al. v. OpenAI
NOTE: Go to the “AI Litigation Tracker” tab at the top of “the brAIn” website for the full discussions and analyses of these and other key generative AI/media litigations. And reach out to me, Peter Csathy (peter@creativemedia.biz), if you would like to be connected to McKool Smith) to discuss these and other legal and litigation issues. I’ll make the introduction.
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