Does It Matter If AI Creates Everything and No-one Can Tell The Difference?
Got to put my hands up, I’m pretty definitely in the “Yes it damn well does!” camp on this one.
Don’t get me wrong, I use AI tools myself from time to time. For example I’ve experimented with using Squarespace Blueprint to start a few of my websites recently. Squarespace stopped being a ‘template’ website provider some time ago. When I first started building, all sites had to begin with a pre-set template and, while there was a lot of room for customisation, it was quite locked down compared to the platform now.
Since the move to Squarespace 7.1 followed by the advent of Fluid Engine a couple of years ago there was no need to build on any kind of template any more and designers had free reign to create anything they could imagine. Squarespace does still provide templates which are meant as starting points, especially for business owners or new designers who might not otherwise know what elements they ought to have on their website. Blueprint kind of combines the two ideas. By inputting some basic information about the business it creates a starter template that is something closer to the end result than a blank page; but not much.
I’ll be honest I was resistant to it at first, but now I see the benefits for me and for my clients, it just gives me a little head start and recently has allowed me to create holding pages for clients while I get on with work behind the scenes.
I was also resistant to using AI for creative writing. I trained as a journalist and started my working life as a newspaper reporter so writing is something that comes easy to me and something that I don’t want to be taken away from humans. But, that just isn’t very Socratic of me is it! In the spirit of true inquiry, I’ve made some forays using claude.ai which uses a chat format (like chatGPT) to generate ideas, polish prose and interrogate data.
I still haven’t made up my mind whether it is ‘better’ than what my own human brain can think of, but it does give a few ideas to try out and, when writing long form, will certainly save time. Where it’s particularly useful is with technical content that is unfamiliar to the author. Let’s say you have a client who wants weekly blogs on the subject of plastics fabrication. Unless you’re a specialist technical writer in this field, you’ll probably struggle.
So I just did it and the results are impressive. I asked for a friendly/chatty article filled with technical jargon for the UK plastics fabrication industry. I got a 1500 word article in under 1 minute. The truth is that would have taken me hours of research and a lot of fact-checking with the client. Time neither of us can spare.
But, there’s a bigger point to this article and that’s the issue of content authenticity.
I recently joined the Content Authenticity Initiative which is a global initiative spearheaded by Adobe to bolster the protection of human-originated content and ensure the accurate identification of machine-generated media. This, I feel, is really the crux of the matter.
Artificial Intelligence is here so we have to find ways to deal with it that facilitate its use, but not abuse, by humans. A good case in point is a recent family group chat where my mum posted up a video and expressed horror at what it showed, asking how it was possible and what could be done to stop it (I deliberately avoided watching it but it involved a polar bear and a giant woodlouse). A long discussion ensued where some family members gently reassured my mum that it was machine-generated and therefore fake and others got into the conspiracy theory side of the debate. If people want to tell machines to create such atrocious nonsense then I guess they can (after all, what is art?) but if that video had been properly attributed, my mum could have avoided her distress and, presumably, embarrassment when she realised her error.
The CAI is not only a talking shop, it has introduced important tools to the world including Content Credentials - kind of an amped-up form of meta data (similar to the data that iPhones automatically add to photos you take such as location, date etc) that places a badge on media that users can click to check the origins and authenticity.
It’s also created a tool called Verify which allows any user to check the credentials of any piece of media with a simple drag and drop. You can try it out at the button below.
So my answer to my two-part question goes like this:
I’d rather not see AI create everything because human ideas are an important part of who we are and I’d prefer for AI to do the boring jobs (or the difficult ones, like writing technical articles) but I accept that it’s a part of what we are now.
It 100% matters that we can tell the difference and that’s why I joined the CAI. I also firmly believe in supporting the original human creators of media and always try to ensure that I appropriately credit them with captions and/or meta data whenever I can.
What do you think about this issue? Comment below.
