“In the ever-evolving technology landscape…” — If you are an avid consumer of business content, I’m sure you encounter this phrase quite a bit these days! The phrase has become the de-facto opening for many B2B blogs, particularly after 2022 — the milestone year ChatGPT was introduced. The GenAI tool helped both writers and non-writers alike to escape the dreaded blank page. In doing so, it has unleashed a certain homogeneity that can put us off and might even lead us to suspect that the content is AI-generated. 

Gen AI’s twisted impact on creative content

AI tools no longer belong to just the techies and geeks. Today, we have a flurry of AI tools across writing, graphic design, product design, fashion design, photography, music, podcasts, and video production. These tools don’t just provide a decent starting point but also assist users at every stage, accelerating their creative production process.

Tools such as DALL-E, Mid-journey, and ChatGPT have dramatically sped up traditionally time-consuming design processes. Adobe’s recent move to add GenAI capabilities, enabling image creation using simple text prompts, seems like a significant step forward.  What’s interesting is Adobe intends to pay the original creators of those stock images.

And here is a game changer for music enthusiasts and creators. Aviva — an AI music-generation assistant allows you to generate new songs in more than 250 different styles in a matter of seconds. On the visual side, Luma AI’s dream machine, which is now open to the public, generates realistic and aesthetic AI videos from text and images. 

Many exclaim these tools are democratising access to professional-level creativity.

But here is the twist! If GenAI drives a never-before-seen acceleration in meaningful content production, it also contributes to AI-generated noise that lacks flavour or nuance or an authentic creative flair that catches the eye. 

Think about it — if everyone is using the same AI tools, trained on similar datasets — how would the content truly stand out, unless obviously that content — be it text, image, or video is embedded with a unique human voice? 

How can GeAI solutions solve chaos and amplify new order?

GenAI’s twisted impact on the creative workforce

Unlike other innovations in the past, which have fundamentally automated mundane, repetitive work, GenAI is inherently a creative tool that promises to automate creativity, albeit in parts. For many professional creators, the entry of GenAI was confusing. They initially demonstrated a viscerally negative reaction, but a couple of years down the time, they have begun to realise the positive impact it has on their work. 

A recent online survey by 99designs, involving 10,000 freelance designers, highlights a significant positive shift in attitudes toward generative AI as the technology becomes mainstream. The study reveals that 52 per cent of designers now use generative AI tools, up from 39 per cent in 2023. Notably, 39 per cent of respondents believe AI will positively influence their careers in the long run, compared to 29 per cent who fear it may have a negative impact. 

But once again, let me introduce the sinister twist here: The 29 per cent seem to be right, because according to Harvard Business Review, there has been a 17 per cent drop in jobs tending to visual design in the past year. Writers on the other hand faced a 30% reduction in jobs in the same year. The research clearly says the trend is likely to continue as AI would not just be a helpful assistant but also replace some of the creative jobs spanning writing, imaging, and even software coding. 

Also Read: Revolutionising retail: A blueprint for future success

Based on the above we can draw two possible conclusions:

• Experienced creators increasingly view AI as a creative ally. They use the tool predominantly for idea generation, gaining a head-start into projects as well as completing low-stakes iterative tasks, where the output can be easily verified. 
• Beginners, on the other hand, might be finding it tricky to surpass business leaders and decision makers  who increasingly believe that GenAI  minimises the need for a larger creative workforce. 

How can GenAI solutions solve chaos and amplify new order among the creative workforce?

GenAI — A friend or foe to the future workforce? 

Though many educators still believe GenAI is the wild wild west, it’s hard to miss that the technology has quietly become a staple in most students’ academic tool kit. Research highlights that 86 per cent of today’s students — the future workforce — already use GenAI in their studies, with 25 per cent doing so every day. 

GenAI has shown tremendous potential to personalise student learning and spark creative exploration. However, the biggest concern most educators/evaluators have is that students use the tool to instantly complete their assignments with the least effort. Gen Y and Gen X teachers, who have seen the transition from traditional to technology-based learning, fear students might become over reliant on the technology, losing their critical problem solving skills and the ability to think independently. This is what some students report as a “fixation of the mind”– inability to think beyond AI ideas and generate original concepts.  

This calls for a thoughtful and balanced approach to integrating AI into classrooms, presenting a promising opportunity for businesses to develop novel generative AI solutions tailored to education. 

How can GenAI solutions solve chaos and amplify new order among the future workforce?

Manipulated media — GenAI’s twisted impact on content consumption

Instagram, which helps millions of influencers monetise their content, is witnessing a proliferation of AI-generated influencers. These AI personas are stealing videos from real models, replacing faces with AI generated ones to create deepfakes. Ultimately, they profit from these manipulated videos by  linking them to dating platforms and various AI-based apps. While genuine human influencers will now have to compete with AI-generated influencers, the bigger concern is the ramifications on consumers. Could they be misled in dangerous ways? 

In an effort to curb misinformation before the election, Meta, earlier this year, proactively began tagging social media content using the “Made with AI” labels. However, soon after when multiple meta users complained that their human-generated images were incorrectly labeled, the company changed to a more subtle “AI info” label. 

We are seeing a clear tug of war between the proliferation of deepfake content and their detection. As deepfake capabilities continue to evolve, it opens up significant opportunities for enterprises and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to innovate. They can develop generative AI solutions that empower consumers to proactively flag AI-generated content, helping steer media consumption away from misinformation and disinformation. 

Also Read: Singapore aims to lead in AI — but where’s the talent?

But not everything is sinister with GenAI in the media. 

Daisy, an AI granny, attempts to strike a balance by scam-baiting hackers. The revolutionary human-like chatbot works by answering calls in real-time, mimicking human conversations to make hackers believe they are conversing with a human, when in fact, Daisy would be wasting the scammer’s time, ultimately reducing the number of scams attempted. 

Even deepfakes as a technology has shown to have tremendous potential to create content otherwise not feasible. It has been employed in production to de-age actors, synchronise actors’ lip sync and movements in multiple languages, and even bring historical figures to life. 

How can GenAI solutions solve chaos and amplify new order in media 

Here’s a technical low down on how the AI models mimic human creativity