As Oscar contenders like “The Brutalist” deploy artificial intelligence to perfect foreign accents and AI-generated country tracks top the charts, anxiety is roiling the creative community. Fear mongers warn that AI will hollow out artistic expression, de-skill entire professions, and damage our capacity for original thought. It won’t. AI is ultimately a boon for creativity.
True, AI can finish work by itself without an artist, but that affects the volume of output more than the nature of human creativity. AI relieves humans not of creativity but of drudgery—the rote, time-consuming tasks that have always consumed more human energy than inspiration ever did. Artists have never defined themselves by their use of certain tools, but by what they do with them.
2025 was truly the year of AI, almost reminiscent of the date August 4, 1997 in The Terminator when Skynet, the artificial intelligence system that ultimately takes over the world, officially went online, kicking off the rapid march to machines' dominance over man. And, honestly, no one knows better the seeming instantaneous omnipresence of "everyone using AI" than teachers at nearly all levels, from elementary school to graduate programs. A quick scan of social media -- or "Teacher Twitter" -- will reveal all manner of requests, rants, and ramblings about how to address the use of AI. For writing teachers especially, it seems like a return to handwritten in-class assignments is one key response.
And, in terms of creativity, I would tend to agree with the Wall Street Journal article that when everyone is using AI to create, the landscape will take on such an obvious tech-induced/influenced style that the truly innovative and creative people will be able to stand out. As I noted in a piece on AI yesterday, I maintain that while humans were able to conceive of, envision, and create artificial intelligence, AI would never have been able to conceive of humans.
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