Been trying for a while to gather my thoughts about the AI revolution. It’s a lot to process. Having been politely coerced into using Chat GPT for well over a year now, I feel well versed in its abilities and limitations, and there are many on either side.

To say AI has swindled many professional creatives out of work is an understatement. Very recently, un-coincidentally around the same time Ghat GPT was launched, my freelance writing jobs just ended, like someone flipped a switch. The kind of English copy most companies in Denmark require are functional, factual, dry and informative. Chat can deliver that in a heartbeat. No need for personality, nor expensive humans getting in the way. The churn will suffice. 

99% of the time, the writing that Chat can spew out can be defined by two words that greedy stakeholders and timid clients love: “good enough”.

The immediate fallout from AI torpedoing my freelance work notwithstanding, the AI revolution has led me to something of an existential crisis. I’ve dedicated over two decades of my life to be a creative writer. Grafting and honing and pushing and striving. To find out your services are now, for the most part, no longer required has been a gutpunch to say the least. 

So now that I have all this spare time, here are my thoughts, in some sort of form. And to start with, I’ll let you in on a little secret: most professionally creative people aren’t that good at much else. 

If they were, they would have been accountants, lawyers, bankers, sales reps or middle managers. You know, safe jobs that pay well, but which no kid ever wished they would be when they grew up.

True creatives, however – and by that I mean those cursed to follow their urges to maintain their professional sanity – are compelled to follow their talent. Why else would they choose a profession that pays so badly, lacks security and is fraught with long hours and endless frustration? They have no choice. It’s a vocation that brings them joy, and that’s a prerequisite for creative folk to thrive.

So they work hard to perfect their craft. For years, striving to improve. To feel fulfilled. To make magic. To become Harry Potter.

But now these are dark times for magic folk. Because AI has let the muggles into Hogwarts. Flooding the classroom with people who don’t know how creatively average they are. AI lets the mediocre piss in the sandpit and their sheer numbers are flooding the whole damn playground.

The magic folk are now drowning in the only space where they had always felt valued and safe. Where they could prove their worth, showcase their talent and earn their keep. And crucially, these witches and wizards understand the process in a way the muggles never will – and the latter’s wholesale embrace of AI is the proof.

The muggles think AI can help all of us. They encourage the magic folk to join them in the sandpit. Condescending remarks like “relax, it’s only a tool” and “it helps you work faster and more efficiently”. This is only true if you couldn’t do it in the first place. And if you couldn’t do it in the first place, if you’re not prepared to put the work in, you shouldn’t be doing it.

See, muggles have no clue that magic folk don’t play like this. Creativity has never been about speed, volume, efficiency or output. If you stop telling magic folk to use it and actually ask them what they think, most will tell you that AI gets in the way. That it actually makes them worse not better, because it removes the vital first and last stages of the creative process. That’s the magic part. Instead we now have a tedious race to the middle with zero joy or satisfaction.

And there’s the rub. AI obstructs magic folk from capitalising on their innate creativity, while at the same time elevating the muggles, deluding them into thinking that the derivative slop the machines spit out has something to say and is worth saying.

And if this all sounds like elitist gatekeeping, fucking right it does. It’s supposed to. Because right now, the hordes are at the gates. We need to push back. Swarms of pretenders, emboldened and enabled by what is at best an exercise in probability, and at worst blatant theft.

We live now in a time where we are encouraged to pass everything through GPT to “make it better”. This effectively is us rolling over to the machines. We give up, you do your magic, because we can only go so far. To me, this is so utterly depressing. Because we are the magic.

Handing over the process impart or whole to AI erodes trust and confidence in personal instinct. It dilutes originality and gives us an excuse not to learn or grow. Ultimately it instils doubt in the creative process. It replaces a singular vision with a back-dated amalgam of second-hand ideas, smashed together into something utterly unremarkable. We like it because it’s reassuringly familiar. A facsimile of achievement. But here’s the thing. AI never surprises us. And that’s what true creativity does. That’s the magic.