In recent years, AI has evolved beyond its traditional role, stepping into the realm of creativity. From generating art and music to writing poetry and even designing products, AI is reshaping our understanding of creativity and what it means for the future.

Could you tell if the above paragraph was AI-generated? AI stands for artificial intelligence. It is a tool that has reshaped our future and is revolutionising the way we think and approach the world around us. In not-so-distant a past, the idea of artificial intelligence was limited to robots, data analysis and number crunching. However, in recent years, AI has turned into something previously unimaginable, a force to reckon with.

It has the power to generate human-like text, music, art, images, various audios and a combination of these. The new generative intelligence models have the ability to learn from massive datasets and user feedback.

One of the biggest impacts AI has had is on creativity. It has the unique ability to aid one’s creativity but also the power to take away from it. Over-reliance on AI can take away from original, authentic work and can hinder one’s creative and analytical thinking skills. It also encourages plagiarism in schools and workplaces and is an easy shortcut, fostering a bad work ethic.

As a result, jobs such as coding, writing, producing images and some creative pursuits are facing major setbacks and are greatly impacted by generative AI. If cheaply made generative AI undercuts human content, there is a massive risk that human ingenuity and innovation could face a setback over time as humans produce less content. There is also an intense competition for human attention spans. This will only grow with more content being produced via AI. Extreme levels of content production could overwhelm us with noise. The need to find new techniques to manage this will grow.

AI is not always accurate. It can lead to discrepancies in data collection and research when writing and sharing information. It also takes away from having a mind of one’s own, and gives AI users an unfair advantage over others who do not use it.

AI is not all bad, there’s hope for us yet. One of the ways AI is being used creatively is through art. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) can analyse huge amounts of data and produce art ranging from sculptures and paintings. An example of this is how, in 2018, a painting named Portrait of Edmond de Bellamy, made using AI, was sold for $432,500 at auction.

While AI is becoming increasingly popular and integrated into creative processes, it also has the power to diminish the human experience. AI should be used to enhance a process, not replicate it.

Algorithms can now analyse music libraries, come up with compositions and recognise patterns for a vast array of genres such as classical, pop and house music etc. This has paved the way for its impact on music.

An obvious advantage of AI is its convenience. It generates content quickly, concisely, and spares you time when writing creative content. It enables you to access information in the palm of your hand, in a comprehensive, complete and concise manner. It also has the ability to analyse text and learn the nuances of a language.

What does this mean for the future? The rapid rise of AI and creativity raises a plethora of questions about the future of human creativity and the role AI plays in society. Some fear that AI will replace human ingenuity and creativity. Others believe that AI has the power to enhance, not replace, original content. It can serve as an important tool for inspiration and pave the way for future and technological advancements.

While AI is becoming increasingly popular and integrated into creative processes, it also has the power to diminish the human experience. AI should be used to enhance a process, not replicate it. For example, it can help us find books based on ones we’ve read previously, not write us an entirely new book. If AI takes over, what will be left for us?

It is important to note that AI is trained on work done by humans, for example using novels written by humans to train ChatGPT. This means that whatever AI can generate for us, we can already do for ourselves. AI should be used as a stepping-stone and an assistant rather than something that can take over a process completely.

It is a strange use of time and resources to train a machine to replace human endeavour. AI should be making our lives easier in concrete ways. Whom does it serve to have a machine think for themselves?

In a world where we are increasingly struggling with mental health and disconnection from human emotions and bonding, this obsession with mechanising our lives further is dangerous and unhealthy. This path is already leading to anxiety and other mental disorders. When we are fully cognizant of the serious impact on our minds that an immersion in technology has, why succumb to it? The human mind and its ingenuity should be more focused on climate change, unequal food distribution across the planet and human rights.

AI has no place interfering with the creative process, probably one of the greatest outputs of the human mind and imagination.

The writer is a student