ChatGPT Rewrites Creative Thinking
Published 01 February 2023
On the heels of image-producing tools like Dall-E and Lensa, ChatGPT is causing an uneasy mix of consternation and excitement in creative communities. Open access to generative artificial intelligence (AI) heralds a landmark moment, but there is growing anxiety about how such tech will affect creative industries.
ChatGPT, the text-response-generating AI tool, is being thoroughly tested on its ability to produce written output, from poetry and short essays to sitcom ideas and movie scripts. While some are curious and optimistic about its potential – especially in fields like marketing – others are more dubious about the impact of AI creativity. For artists themselves, the issue is at the heart of questions around creative merit. When a user asked ChatGPT to write a song in the style of renowned lyricist Nick Cave, Cave called the chatbot a “grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”.
Just as apps like Lensa have raised concerns over image plagiarism and creative copyright, ChatGPT’s ability to impressively mimic creative writing has many worried about how quickly the bot will be employed to replace the work of writers. While some are envisioning mass layoffs, the reality may be more nuanced. ChatGPT’s ability to aid in research, drafting and even ideation seems set to change creative working practices. This has already begun. For example, Dutch influencer marketing agency Post For Rent is integrating the chatbot into its offerings, and competitor tools like Anthropic’s Claude are adding ‘human-like’ interfaces, positioning the AI as an intelligent assistant in creative tasks.
Although stunts like requesting full articles, scripts or songs from models such as ChatGPT present entertaining experiments, the bigger impact on cultural industries will be how quickly this AI is treated as an indispensable component of creative planning. The question for brands in these fields will be where and how to retain the human spark in their output.
For more on the implications of generative AI, see AI Wrote My Homework: Experiments with ChatGPT.
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