I’ve been running workshops and talks on how AI is impacting the creative industries for a couple of years now. And the question which comes up every time is: “What can I do about AI taking my job?”
Well, firstly, I say, I get it. I’ve been making films and immersive experiences for decades, so I am fully aware of the disruption that AI is having on that industry. But on the other hand, I run an immersive storytelling company, and we’ve been embracing AI from the beginning.
So, I can see both the positives and the negatives of this new AI era.
If you’re a freelance editor struggling to find work, when a few years ago you were permanently hired, or one of the digital artists laid off by a big company, or a struggling musician, hardly able to make ends meet because of this (and previous) disruptions to the music industry, of course you are going to be kept awake at night worrying about the future.
Or you might be (like me) one of the writers whose work has been used to train AI, without permission being asked or recompense given for our creativity. The majority of artists, creatives, musicians, and most workers in the creative industries don’t earn much anyway. To know their creativity is being used, making others rich, without a by your leave, is making blood boil.
Some creatives tell me they are ideologically opposed to AI because it can never replicate human expression, or create anything with the human “soul” (and I agree, it can’t); others say they are raging against this new technology, but feel impotent; some say they hate AI and distrust anyone who is involved with it.
I completely get why it’s a burning issue. But I don’t hate AI. I see the problems, but I also see opportunities. Whether we succeed or fail by it depends on how we respond to it.
9 ways to respond…
So here are 10 responses to AI that have helped me personally navigate this new disruptive era:
1/ Reframe the challenge.
Like it or not, the AI genie is out of the box now. There is no chance of it quietly sneaking back into the box, so we need to find the best ways to respond to it. As my wise old Dad used to say (after a lifetime of being repeatedly crushed): “When you can’t change something, you have to change the way you look at it.”
So instead of hating AI, try thinking about it as an opportunity. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, said that it isn’t AI that’s going to take your job – it’s the person who uses AI who will take your job.
So don’t just rail against AI, seek out ways it could be useful to you. Yes, stay aware of the challenges, but keep your eyes on the prize, which might be different for different people. It might be extra creative expression, reaching wider audiences, making money in different ways. Whatever your driving force is, harness AI to do your bidding. Become the master not the slave of AI!
2/ Learn New Tricks
Don’t cry at home alone, or rant at your loved ones about how there is no work for you any more – that will only ruin your health. Even if you are an old dog like me, you can learn new tricks. Lean into the technology. Find out what AI tools you can use to make your creative work easier, faster, more powerful. Whatever your creative specialism, there’s an AI tool in the toolbox, for you. (I’ll post something with more details about this later.)
So don’t let AI replace your human creativity; turn it into a powerful toolkit that can augment and expand your creative possibilities.
I know optimists like me can be really annoying. If you are struggling for money, or you can’t even get in front of new employers, let alone impress them with your creativity, you can find depression and inertia setting in. But you are a creative – you have spent a lifetime solving problems, creating new things, thinking creatively. You may think you are too experienced to learn new tricks, but you are not. New Tricks is what creatives do! And when you find a small mundane task (which used to slow up your workflow) is suddenly done for you at the click of a button, then you will have more time for the really creative stuff – which is the bit you like anyway?
I’m not saying this will be easy, or something you dreamed of, but it is a better option than crying into your pillow every night and cursing that wretched AI. Grab it, make it work for you – pour your rage, despondency or whatever emotion is being evoked, into a creative project!
I will go into much more detail about the AI potential for specific jobs and sectors of the creative industries in later posts….
3/ Get even more creative
It’s more important than ever to value your creativity.
Yes, use all the toys in the AI toybox, but don’t let them overwhelm your creative work. If creative professionals rely too much on AI tools without guidance, curation or critical evaluation, it shows. Your creative output will be homogenized, appearing like every other ChatGPTed piece of work, lacking the unique quirks and perspectives that make your human creativity so valuable.
Don’t get lazy and seduced by tools like that Google “polish” button – I’ve clicked it a few times, and found it just took away my “voice”. OK, so maybe my words aren’t as “well written” as Google likes, maybe I use too many phrases piled in on top of each other, and yes I could be more succinct. But it’s my voice, and you can usually hear me speaking through the words. (I hope you can tell this isn’t Gemini speaking!!)
When you start to play with the AI toolbox, you might find you can create new forms of creative expression. Great. Run with it. You might be able to push artistic boundaries, creating stuff that has never been made before. You could for instance create interactive work which responds to audience input in novel ways, creating dynamic and engaging experiences. You might be able to combine data and ideas in ways you couldn’t before, because it took too long.
So big up your creative input. Whether curating or creating, make sure it has your unique human touch.
4/ Find AI’s limitations.
Knowing what AI can’t do is as useful as knowing what it can. This will empower you for a start – remember: of all the things AI is being trained to replicate, human creativity is one of the hardest for it to fathom. And my opinion is that the AI landscape will have changed long before AI has got anywhere near your human creativity.
AI handles repetitive tasks and provides a starting point. But it can’t compete on some of the things humans can do. Human creativity provides conceptualization, emotional depth, and unique perspective. It provides unique voices, originality and authenticity, nuance and humour. (Oh humour! AI just can’t get its “intelligence” around that one! To cheer yourself up, ask ChatGPT to tell you a joke. You will howl with laughter. But not because it’s a good joke!)
AI is also prone to make serious mistakes. For instance, it can’t understand parody or sarcasm, so takes it on face value. It replicates April Fool jokes as if they are fact. And it can create unwanted bias. So check and check again before using anything it tells you. Treat it like a precocious child whose grasp of the truth is questionable.
So you can work in collaboration with AI, harness its powers, but always put your own powers front and centre.
And keep on top of AI developments, so you can keep ahead of the game. The technology is bounding ahead, and the landscape will change, so make sure that your human input is the one AI still can’t catch up with.
5/ Be optimistic.
AI will change in ways we don’t expect, and some of those ways just might be to your advantage.
You may have been told that AI will get better and better. Of course it will – the technology is rapidly developing – there are some seriously brilliantly beings (humans and AI) working on this. But here’s a thing that the algorithms didn’t foresee: AI output for things like Gemini, ChatGPT etc. is getting worse. Why is this? Because the AI is now training on the stuff it churns out itself. Some are calling it AI inbreeding. With each churning, the creativity gets less and less human, and more and more….how can I put this – shit. Rather than the creativity getting, in Alice In Wonderland’s words, “curiouser and curiouser” it’s getting worse and worser. (Gemini would “polish” that last sentence for me, for sure!)
This AI-degeneration will only accelerate, now that creatives have got wise to the fact that AI has been trained on their past creativity. As creators withdraw their content from the training model processes, AI will be more reliant on its own AI output, getting more and more slop-like. Legislation will eventually come in to regulate data-mining (see below) and then the standard of AI content will just plummet!
So whilst AI may be providing companies or your paying customers with cheap creativity for now, (and may be reducing your work opportunities) it will only be a couple of years (seriously, I don’t think it will be long!) before the recipients of creativity are back knocking on your door, desperate for your skills and imagination.
6/ Always check the provenance of your content.
Always ask yourselves where your content is coming from. If you are a producer, or a publisher, or an agency, be aware of whether work is AI-generated or not. It’s fine if AI tools have been used – as I said, that is one of the things creatives can do: use what AI offers them to improve their workflows. But keep vigilant about whether there has been acceptable AI use. Provenance matters in the creative industries. It’s fine to share, be inspired by others, to collaborate. But don’t rip off shamelessly. Grayson Perry recently said he’s “the world champion of cultural appropriation.” (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/may/18/world-champion-of-appropriation-grayson-perry-says-he-isnt-bothered-by-ai-using-his-work)
But he puts all ideas through his own quirky creativity machine, and comes up with something unique and clearly Grayson Perry-esque.
So be provenance-aware. Don’t become part of the problem.
7/ Give credit where due
If you do use AI-generated content, always try to give credit for other people’s work. I haven’t used any GPTs or AI assistants for this article, but I have read and digested and responded to other work, which I cite, or have made links to.
Borrowing other people’s ideas isn’t new, actually. I could tell you a few funny stories about producers who “borrowed” my ideas (sometimes almost the entire script) without acknowledging where they were “inspired”. Borrowing creativity, and sharing it around, has been part of the creative process for decades, centuries even. But I’ve noticed that a positive spin off of the AI debacle is that people are citing inspiration more often. It’s only a good thing. Call out the human creative in the room! Let’s all sing together, (but acknowledge the song writer).
8/ Don’t become an AI idiot.
You are creative – keep those creative muscles working, for as long as you can. Don’t be like the idiots who see a quick buck and use AI to spam the creative world with rubbish. For instance, the guy who used AI to create thousands of 3D models, stealing the creativity of other 3D modellers. He then uploaded those thousands of models onto the 3D model sales platform: Fab. His spammed, AI-derivative models took up 20% of the site. A literal waste of space. If 10 more people do that, Fab will become a useless platform. It’s already really annoying having to scroll through this guy’s garbage, trying to find the nugget of genuine creative work.
The positive I see for the future (see, I told you I am an optimist) is that platforms like Fab will get sick of all this AI spam, clogging up their platform (it will affect their bottom line as well). Then they will ban it. Or have a separate platform, which some platforms out there are already doing – “if you want human creativity, form a queue here. Those wanting a quick, free spam-dump, here you go….”
9/ Let your voice be heard.
If you do feel a rant coming on, then channel it into positive constructive action, such as filling out the ALCS survey for writers, or writing to your MP (or political representative in other countries), or joining a campaign group. Support the strong voices speaking up for artists, such as Elton John who is passionately speaking out to challenge the UK government’s current legislation, claiming that if they allow AI firms to use artists’ content without paying, they would be “committing theft, thievery on a high scale”.
For the record, I understand the argument that if UK stands alone in insisting creatives are recompensed by AI companies, they risk getting left behind in the AI race. But to that argument, I will say this: the same was said about Europe’s insistence on GDPR regulation (personal data privacy laws); yet Europe held strong. And now most territories comply with those same GDPR rules. A rising tide raises all ships, as they say.
For more information to help you navigate this area, there is a good report just out: https://lnkd.in/dEKw39Vx (Thanks to: #CoSTARNationalLab with partners DECaDE and Sheridans)
So these are just 9 tips I’ve been working through with despondent creatives at workshops. The more we talk together, the more we learn to keep creative, keep learning new tricks, support other creatives and make our unique voices heard.
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