The Art of AI
In This Post
AI isn’t just a tech tool – it’s becoming a creative collaborator. In this post, we explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping design, where its creative limits lie, and why humans still matter in the art world.
Unlike its depiction in movies like The Matrix, AI’s development in the modern world has been advancing alongside society, without apocalyptically eradicating it.
That being said, its rapid rise in recent years has led tech industry titans to question AI’s advancement, calling for a halt to its development.
For people working in design, content and marketing, the real question isn’t just whether AI will “take over,” but how we use AI-generated art and tools in a way that supports human creativity instead of flattening it. In this post, we zoom in on AI’s role in visual work. If you’re curious about how AI is changing writing and copy, we’ve unpacked that in our piece on what makes copy good in a world of AI.
The “father” of artificial intelligence
The “Godfather of AI,” former tech leader Geoffrey Hinton, left his job at Google last year after being one of the foundational experts to bring the technology that systems like ChatGPT are built on to life.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” The New York Times reported Dr. Hinton saying in an interview conducted at his home in Toronto.
Citing generative AI’s role in the spread of misinformation and “deep-fakes,” the article notes that, down the road, AI technology could threaten more than our access to legitimate information on the internet.
AI’s rapid advancement could out-match the need for human labour, impacting numerous employment sectors, and it could eventually threaten the existence of humanity (so we aren’t in The Matrix – yet).
For designers and marketers, those big-picture fears trickle down into much more everyday questions: Should we be using AI in marketing and design at all? If so, where does it help – and where does it cross a line?
In the interview, Dr. Hinton spoke to the fear-inducing timeline that AI’s development is currently on:
“‘The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that . . . But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.’”
In spite of Dr. Hinton and other expert’s fears, AI has aided various industries, from design to research and medicine.
Arnold Street’s VP of Creative, Andrew, spoke with me recently about how AI has created opportunity – and cause for concern – in the realm of art and design.
Is AI generated art, art?
Before we talk about tools, we need to ask the basic question: is AI-generated art actually “art,” or just output?
Plug in the question: what is “art” into ChatGPT (the generative AI platform just prompted me to try the new 4.0 version – which is the last version that tech leaders, including Elon Musk, cited as the last point between us having control over AI and it potentially outwitting us in future), and it says:
“Ultimately, art is a dynamic and evolving concept that resists a single, definitive definition. It is a reflection of human creativity and our desire to understand and express the complexities of our existence.”
I followed up and asked ChatGPT if it thinks AI art is “art.” This was the response generated:
“If art is defined primarily by human intentionality, emotional depth, and lived experience, AI art may fall short.”
Andrew, VP of Creative echoed ChatGPT’s sentiments (how meta – but not Meta).
“In five to ten years, maybe Photoshop doesn’t exist anymore, in the same way,” Andrew mused to me over Zoom. He was reflecting on the future of AI and design, noting that, while AI is currently incapable of replacing human designers, it’s well on its way to being more than a valuable asset in the realm of art and content creation.
“We still need the human element,” he argued, citing how big budget box office movies that rely on green screens and AI are flopping (“[it’s not] what people are responding to,” he said).
In terms of design in the creative and marketing sphere, he said that “there’s no AI software out there that could take a client brief and turn it into a campaign.”
In other words, AI can help us sketch, remix and prototype, but it can’t replace the strategic thinking, taste and context that go into real campaigns, branding and content marketing.
For the foreseeable future, this is true. We’re still “kind of” in control of it, he said, adding: “when the tools are more integrated, and the abilities of AI are more integrated with the tools we’re using – that’s the sweet spot.”
How we actually use AI in marketing & design
At Arnold Street, we treat AI like a very fast intern with no taste: useful, but not in charge. In our day-to-day AI in marketing and design work, that looks like:
- using image and layout tools to generate rough concepts or variations we can refine
- pulling moodboards and visual references faster than we ever could by hand
- stress-testing ideas with different prompts to see how a concept might flex across channels
- using AI for marketing research – summarizing long articles, pulling patterns from social chatter, or helping with light first-draft thinking – before a human steps in to shape the actual work
What we don’t do is hand a client brief to an AI tool and call whatever comes out “the idea.” AI and marketing work best together when the human sets the strategy, voice and boundaries – and AI helps explore the space inside those lines. If you want the words side of this equation, we go deeper on AI and copywriting in our post on what makes copy good in a world of AI.
Where AI Goes Next
So at this point in time, we’re approaching the sweet spot: using AI-generated art and tools to boost efficiency and spark ideas, without handing over the reins. The question is how long we’ll be able to stay there.
Although we use AI to increase efficiency and output, it could never replace our creativity – and at ASA, we take pride in that. As a digital marketing agency in Toronto and creative agency, we use AI thoughtfully in our design and AI marketing workflows, but keep humans in charge of strategy, story and taste. Check out our host of services under our creative agency umbrella here, or get in touch if you want to talk about how AI fits into your brand.
FAQs
Unlike The Matrix, AI isn’t slated to take over the world – yet. No, we’re kidding. The most pressing concern in the near future is AI’s ability to replace millions of jobs worldwide – the distribution of labour between tech and human workers will have to be moderated to avoid a labour crisis.
For creative industries, the bigger near-term question isn’t robot overlords – it’s how we reshape roles so AI tools handle the repetitive parts and humans can focus on the work that actually requires taste, judgment and empathy.
While it’s hard to say what exact shape more “humanlike” AI robots will take in future, Alicia Vikander’s robot skin suit isn’t a possibility that we anticipate becoming the norm. More likely, we’ll start to see technological advancements in areas that we already have, like automated services and increasingly equipped ChatGPT bots.
For most of us, that will look more like smarter software woven into our everyday tools than humanoid robots walking down the street.
Putting a complete stop to AI’s advancement is not a realistic outcome at this stage of the game – however, a global treaty could help to regulate its growth, slowing it to a more manageable rate. However, enacting a global treaty would be a cumbersome task, and so the future of AI remains a journey that we’re embarking on together.
In the meantime, individual companies, industries and creative teams have to set their own guardrails for how they use AI – especially in areas like marketing, design and content.
Right now, most teams use AI in marketing and design to speed up parts of the process, not to replace it. That can mean generating rough visual concepts, pulling research, summarizing long documents or testing different versions of copy and layouts. The strongest work still comes from humans who know how to ask good questions, make smart choices and protect the brand’s voice.
