Replaceable?

On Monday evening, a bit skeptical, I opened OpenAI’s ChatGPT and typed in “brainstorm ideas for the Radiolab newsletter.” Within seconds, the artificial intelligence bot spouted back at me 10 suggestions — six of which I’d come up with in the past few months.

The tool launched a week ago today. A couple of my friends have already used it to write stories for their kids, songs, or even basic reports. How much time could I save myself if I just asked the bot?

Here’s something else that’s been taking over my social media feeds: people posting beautifully stylized avatars of themselves. Images generated by AI in the Lensa app, creating tens, even hundreds of artistic renderings of perfect, unique you. Not only can it make you look like the most stunning versions of yourself, you also find yourself in multiple imaginary worlds. All you need is 10 to 20 actual photos of yourself to give it something to work with, and now you’re a fairy, a famous painter's subject, an anime character. Incidentally, here are these three versions of me, made with 13 passable selfies of the last six years (I'm not selfie-prolific):

Some are looking further still: check out the Instagram account @as_directed_by. Nosferatu, as directed by Tom Ford. In the Mood for Love, as directed by Tim Burton. Amélie, as directed by Dario Argento. Batman, as directed by Wes Anderson. It’s a cinephile’s delight. Creator @tkemalediction is pulling all these stills not from an alternate reality, but from Midjourney, “an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” They run, you guessed it, on AI.

So… will AI ever be good enough to replace us in creative spaces?

Maybe, if you can’t keep up, according to Peter Smart, Chief Experience Officer at Fantasy, a global agency that designs digital products and services for clients like Netflix or Google. Illustrators, for example, might struggle — unless they learn to art-direct machines. But Smart says it’s more likely that AI will do the “grunt work” of coming up with ideas and turn us into curators of art, ideas, even strategies. He is already experimenting with AI; for him, it’s a question of how, not whether, to bring it into the production process.

So it seems that while AI can provide ideas and insights based on data, humans will continue to do the work of connecting dots and telling stories.

But it’s still early days. I asked ChatGPT to write me 500 words on AI. Here’s a bit of what it said:

“In conclusion, the fear that AI will replace us is understandable, but it is important to remember that AI also has the potential to create new jobs and opportunities.”

Of course AI would say that.