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The world was amazed by the latest displays of text-to-image technology from OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Google’s Imagen. Beautiful, incredibly creative compilations, all generated by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This is possible because the AI has learned to understand natural language by looking at countless texts and images.
Today’s systems are trained to output new images when text is entered alongside pictures, bringing two seemingly disparate things together in a unique way, much to the delight of viewers. A traditional image, such as that of an oil painting, can be co-opted to express something new or evoke a completely different feeling. It’s a new way to create.
Transformative creativity
Imagine that with this AI technology, users no longer have to scroll through tons of image results to find the best content for their needs. Unlike image search, people create something completely new, something that never existed, something that perfectly suits their desires, whims, or content direction. All they have to do is type what they want and the AI will draw images and construct pictures as described in the given text ie. “Please give me a picture of a restaurant with a VentureBeat sign in the window that’s on Mars.” New systems will return such pictures. Essentially, the system is an AI designer.
Such creative power grows exponentially when it is also used to create videos from text that describes a situation and mood and includes virtual actors. Or when text + AI constructs the music to go with videos and images.
Text-to-video or music technologies are already commercially available and continue to improve, revealing the potential to add more creative processes. If artificial intelligence can draw images or designs, the roles of human designers may evolve. Having brilliant and inspiring ideas will become more important and the ability to distinguish the best result from the worst will be crucial as drawing skills can be replaced by AI. The less skilled could also develop their own creative products with less effort.
The new corporate creativity
But it’s not just about what can be done to be creative, but how such technology can be used to impact our world. There are certainly many fun or even heart-warming applications that can enrich our personal lives, but how will artificial intelligence change creativity in the business world?
To begin with, it can dramatically reduce the time, money and resources spent by marketing and advertising teams. New campaigns can be introduced in the blink of an eye. AI-based ads will allow teams to respond to changes in the landscape, respond to news or trends, or proactively launch products and services in entirely new ways.
Additionally, such content and materials could easily be reproduced in multiple languages using AI to enable companies to quickly, easily and affordably reach global audiences, further aiding international expansion. These are strong reasons to invest in AI technology for creative use.
The evolving role of people
The biggest question on many people’s minds, however, is what might the implementation of such technology mean for the role of humans? If they no longer create the ad, are they even needed? I’d say they’re still creating the creativity, just with different tools that make it easier and more cost-effective.
In a world where AI systems can enhance creative processes, humans will still be expected to take on higher-level tasks such as developing ideas, giving instructions, evaluating, revising and making final decisions – and they will have infinitely more options at their disposal. They will be responsible for constructing and defining the elements of the composition, but without the burden of assembling it. Through the use of AI tools, productivity AND creativity can increase as people perform various activities more easily.
Potential for abuse
As with any innovative technology, there is potential for abuse. We’ve all seen images, hate speech and misinformation spread on social media – what would AI-generated content do differently? I believe our society can find an ethical consensus to use technology in a positive way, but we have the ability to regulate if necessary.
Perhaps one potential problem is the issue of copyright or plagiarism for an AI system applied to creative development. DALL-E 2 was trained with tons of images online and it is possible to return an image that is very similar to an existing one. Likewise, problems with AI authors, AI music compositions, and even more types of AI-generated algorithms can occur.
Recently, for example, virtual people with AI-generated voices and faces have become popular around the world. In these cases, the face or voice of a virtual person can closely resemble the identity of an actual person based on big training data.
Applying human rules to AI creations
But our society has already reached a consensus about plagiarism of writing or composing by humans. For AI, similar guidelines can be applied to creators, and if necessary, an AI-based plagiarism checker can help review user decisions for absolute clarity. People are in control. Content creators set the rules for how text, images, videos, and voice can be combined; they set the course.
AI for creative use will be used to elevate brands. As such, the AI providers that make these enhancements possible can also be selected based on the types of licensing relationships they have, the volume and quality of images they have access to, the pool of voice actors under contract, the ability to combine such assets with creating unique footprints and much more if more monitoring is required.
And if or when it doesn’t, new technologies are rapidly being developed that can preserve the digital identity and authenticity of images. For example, each human voice, each face consists of tens of thousands of features. The same goes for images. This makes it very, very difficult to copy them in their entirety without permission.
Considerable research is already underway on deep counterfeit detection. Similarly, researchers and data scientists are able to deconstruct the characteristics of a speaker’s voice to determine if a unique voice is used in a video or audio fragment, or if a combination of many voices is mixed through the strategic and appropriate use of technology.
And researchers are hard at work developing other preventative solutions. The tech industry is learning from past mistakes to protect the future, especially when it comes to AI.
We are sitting at the precipice of a moment when creativity can take a great leap forward. Amazing things will only be possible if we open our human minds to what could be.
Taesu Kim is the CEO of Neosapience.
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