What does it mean to be creative?
“You’re so creative. Like deeply creative.”
A saying that I receive almost every time I open up to someone new. The common reaction I am given due to the output of my hobbies and career, often followed up with I’m not creative. I can’t draw or stickman is as far as I got in my artistic endeavours.
Ultimately believing that creativity is something you're born with —something I accepted I had been.
But with so many thinking they are not creative and the huge rise of AI as an artistic output, what does it mean to be a creative. Do we value talented output, over intention?
When in fact, if we stripped back the meaning, creativity is about making connections.
My role as a designer and being recognised for creative strategy, is mainly problem solving. I create, research and find insights into that subject or campaign objective, in hope to find the creative solution to the marketing challenge. As a writer I am looking at the logistics, value proposition of the reader and what tension I am dissolving. Ultimately, what is being communicated and how is it being read.
I have found that the more I develop my skills in writing, it is not about the creativity of words but the angle that is used to alleviate the tension – this is what I believe is a good copy writer. When I design, I work with balance, hierarchy and imagery so that I can ‘feel’ what is being communicated. Of course, these are a few examples of the different rules and building blocks that working creatives consider.
It's what we find joy in.
I stumbled across a book from the local library that was written in 2019, by Marcus Du Sautoy, the creativity code. For me it’s a hard book to digest, however, the summary of the book is that he asks can a machine ever be truly creative, or is creativity something uniquely human?
He writes that creativity is about making connections, and that one doesn’t have to be ‘artistic’ to be creative. Something that Rick Rubin in the creative circle also mentions. Marcus debates that AI does something similar that traditional artists do with the thousands of experiences, influences and emotions they consider. AI can only produce this from learned patterns and examples and combining them together.
Out of curiosity I asked two different models what is creativity, and surprisingly they came with similar answers.
‘Being creative means producing something that is both new and meaningful. Creativity isn't just about art, music, or writing. It can appear in science, business, relationships, problem-solving, cooking, engineering, or everyday life. A creative person finds connections, ideas, or solutions that others haven't noticed.’
And
Being creative fundamentally means making novel connections between existing ideas, materials, or possibilities to produce something that didn't exist before — and that matters in some way.’
Both providing similar explanations to what creatives do and the million decisions we make. That when some asks me how I made something, and I explain that it’s the connections we associate with particulars – Only I am verbalising it differently. Often responded with how clever that is.
These responses made me further believe, that a creative person is anyone making connections in whatever they are looking at. Can it be argued that the use of AI isn’t because a person is using it but in how they are using it.
When I design and I can’t find the right image, asking AI to create it makes my skin crawl. But asking it for feedback on a poster doesn’t. Does that make me a hypocrite? When I write my book and I ask it to be my main character, giving it all the characteristics and ticks, to which I then imitate an interview with that character, does that make my fictional writing less than?
Does using a machine make me less authentic or creative?
Whichever tools used, it surely should be about intent with transparency in how it was created?
The reason we are having such debates is that it is unclear of the intent. Those using an AI to create content and then not saying it has not been created with AI is misleading. Taking a story plot and getting the machine to write it is robbing those who have put the hard work in. Or pretending to be a music artist.
How much has been given to prompt AI or is it carless output.
Nevertheless, using it to help better ourselves or a system surely is a good thing? As someone who has two diagnosed learning disabilities, I find that using a machine has helped me in ways that a human never has. Without the help of AI, I would continue to struggle at the basics of some tasks.
Yet, I am still considered to be profoundly creative. Still authentic. And I am using ai, because creativity is about the connections and patterns I make.
