All of us creative types are freaking out about generative A.I. And with good reason. Its abilities are progressing exponentially and, by comparison, our human ability to anticipate what’s next is pathetic. We’ve never been good at predicting the future, even when we’ve been warned about it by the few more imaginative souls among us who have tried.

Still, we seem to have two choices: resist AI or embrace it.

Fight or flight?

Throughout most of the last few centuries, designers ordered type for their projects from professional, highly trained craftspeople: typesetters. We’d get back paper proofs, and paste those onto “mechanicals” with wax or rubber cement to create the final artwork for the book or ad or annual report we were designing.

Typesetting was a well-established, lucrative business with thousands of talented participants — many of whom were true artists. Whether it was machine-set metal text, or a hand-set headline using state-of-the-art photo-based equipment, the quality was up to the skill of the operator. It relied on their years of experience to be done well.

Then, in the mid-1980s with the adoption of the Macintosh, laser printers, and software like Aldus Pagemaker, everything changed. Designers could now directly see and control the way text looked on the page. It was amazing. Powerful. Magical.

The response from the typesetting industry was panic.

Frantically clawing to hold onto their trade, they proposed that designers send their Pagemaker layout files to them so they could tweak the settings and make the text look professionally set. They then sent back proofs for the designer to paste up, managing to undermine the obvious convenience and speed of designing on a computer and printing it out directly as a finished product.

Typesetting as an industry rapidly crashed and burned. Technology moved forward. Designers mastered computers and software. Now we all set type ourselves as part of the design process.

Actually, the brilliant apps set the type. We just evaluate it—a key point.

The Paintbox predicament

In the 1990’s there was a cutting-edge photo retouching studio in LA that used a shockingly expensive system from Quantel called Paintbox. Their investment was well into six figures, even back then. For the coolest effects and highest quality, ad agencies with healthy budgets sent their transparencies to be scanned, color-balanced, retouched, and filtered.

Then, suddenly, there was Photoshop. For a few hundred bucks rather than a few hundred thousand, anybody could install it on their Mac and do their own photo retouching and image manipulation.

The explosion of desktop creativity was enormous. The fancy Paintbox folks crashed and burned.

Interestingly, the retouchers who formerly worked with tiny brushes, dyes, and airbrushes adopted Photoshop with glee. And now there are thousands of incredibly talented retouchers who can make Photoshop sing in ways most designers can’t.

And here we are again.

A.I. can make images. A.I. can generate copy. A.I. can even generate video in real time that looks and sounds real. It’s scary. Realistically, it might be scarier than anything since the invention of the steam engine or television or nuclear weapons.

Or maybe it’s another tool.

Deus ex machina

As creative people — designers, illustrators, writers — we feel threatened. All the skills we learned to date are on the chopping block. Our value, our self-esteem, and our livelihood are up for grabs. Yes, it’s damn scary to see that AI can do something in minutes that used to take us hours.

But it’s not going away, is it? It’s useful. It’s cheap (sometimes even free).

So instead of freaking out, I say let’s explore it. Learn to use it. Learn what it’s good at. Learn what its limitations are. Incorporate it into our work.

Fortunately for us, it can’t do our work.

Since the target of what it’s used for will always be human beings (who spend money, appreciate art, go to movies, read articles), it seems there will always be people who direct and evaluate its output — specifically designers, artists. writers, editors, creative directors, and so on. People with empathy, taste, talent and vision who understand what makes something interesting and engaging.

Even if their works were entirely A.I.-generated, do you think that Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan would turn out similar movies,? Doubtful. Similarly, no two designers will use AI the same way, or with the same results.

Will our jobs and roles change as A.I. develops? Guaranteed.

Will they disappear? Probably (and hopefully) not.

One other important issue is that A.I. has to be trained in order to work. So far it’s been trained on human content — novels, articles, paintings, photos. But as it continues to generate content, it will be trained on itself. Its output will become more contaminated, self-referential, and repetitive than it already is.

A.I. can indeed do amazing stuff. Powerful. Magical. Let’s harness its power, embrace the technology as artists and creators, and stay aware of its limitations. That allows us to expand our own skillset, create more value for our clients, and avoid the pitfalls of trying to claw back our old way of working in the face of a rapidly changing world.

Really, when has that ever worked?