Did everyone survive May? I feel like I’m still recovering. As a newish mother of four, I’ve never been stretched so thin, but equally haven’t laughed so much in my life. (Why are kids so funny!?) I kept saying, “I’ll get to it in June!” But June is here and life isn’t slowing down.
Right after school ended, we scooped our kids up and dashed off for a long awaited family vacation to the Oregon Coast. We drove, stopping in Idaho on the way there, and it was magical. I’ll share our full itinerary soon because it was so restorative and just what you envision a seaside vacation to be. Nature is so healing and I understand now why so many people in the classics were sent to the sea when ill. It truly felt like a cure all.
A little photo from our trip!
As for AI, I had my first questionable encounter with it as a professional.
A new potential client had created some beautiful illustrations and packaging with AI and “just needed a designer to make it workable.”
Excuse me?! I was a little caught off guard. They weren’t after my creativity, they needed a technician.
I pushed a bit more and asked how the illustrations were created? They explained they simply fed AI inspiration images and prompts.
Hmmmm.
I asked if they could share the images they used to feed the AI. (seemed like a fair and reasonable question to me!)
The potential client then changed their tune and said, “We’re hoping whoever we hire will put their own creative spin on it.” And then followed up with a text explaining that they were talking with a lot of designers and would let me know if they needed my services.
Have not heard back. Probably for the best! But I cannot stop thinking about it. The ethics of it all?
I’ve known for a while that AI could take my job, but hadn’t prepared for this part. How do we safeguard our own work? How do we make sure we aren’t enabling non-creatives to poach? How do we know the AI work our clients are producing is fair and legal?
At this point, I’m going to go out on a short limb and say it’s not.
But here’s the thing. I’ve tried AI…out of curiosity…to see, could it really steal my job? The thing is, I don't think it can. So far everything it makes is…well… tacky. Even when fed with very specific instructions, it never can create what’s in my head. Our own ideas and thoughts will always be better than a regurgitated, hyper-realized AI version any day, and I find so much comfort in that.
That’s all for today. More on Oregon soon.
—ajj
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.