Can generative AI coexist with human creativity in imagery?

• How can I use this technology, or should I use this technology?
• Can this help spark my creativity, or is it hurting other creatives?
• Can I create something better, or is this worth simply saving time?

Does generative AI have a place in the text, visuals and other creative elements used in branding and marketing materials to tell an organization’s story, set a tone or illicit a response?

Let’s look at what some recent research says. First, let’s explore the use of generative AI in the workplace.

How prevalent is the use of generative AI at work?

Generative AI has taken the world by storm with users implementing ChatGPT, DALL-E and other platforms to create text, visuals and more.

In the workplace, 65% of respondents say their organizations regularly use generative AI in at least one business function, according to McKinsey research detailing the state of AI in early 2024. Three-fourths of professionals surveyed believe generative AI will cause “significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead."

Experts predict the use of generative AI, revenue created from generative AI services and the number of apps created based on AI are only going to skyrocket from here.

Where do these advancements leave human creativity?

As technology has evolved, especially in the 21st century, creativity has generally been regarded as uniquely human and not easily replicated by machines, as noted by the Harvard Business Review. But as AI has forged into the creation of content typically believed to be only produced through human creativity, it’s left some creators questioning when or how to incorporate AI in their work.

If we know generative AI use is trending rapidly upward, do creatives embrace it? We posed this question to an expert in creative trends and needs across the globe, Dr. Rebecca Swift, senior vice president of creative for Getty Images, during a recent podcast conversation. Getty Images has worked to come up with a plan to incorporate a generative AI tool into its offerings while paying its network to create images to train the AI tool.

Rebecca shared that Getty Images has been intentional to:

1. Develop opportunities for its creators to generate content and collaborate with each other, obviously paying them for that work.
2. Offer its own AI tool using images only from its creators with the creators’ permission.

If AI isn’t going away, how can we make it better and more ethical?

We’ve previously cautioned the use of AI as a tool to supplement work, not replace it or human intelligence and creativity. Getty Images has looked to bridge the gap between those who want to or currently do use generative AI with those who have a wealth of creative knowledge and ability.

The visual media company designed creator events to bring photographers and artists from across the globe together to collaborate and capture imagery of a variety of scenery and scenarios. Participants can choose to allow their visuals to be used to train Getty Images’ AI tool. This way, photographers are creating visuals first but also expanding the breadth of content training the generative AI tool. It not only improves the visuals created through AI, but it also ensures creators are opting in to having their visuals train an AI model and being compensated for it.

“In this day and age — where there’s this kind of perception that content is very easy, that you can create it on your computer, that it doesn’t take a creative — we [at Getty Images] really want to be supporting our creative community and giving them the opportunity to learn from each other,” Rebecca said. “We also want to be investing in time to help them improve their own work.”

Additionally, providing a range of content allows the images generated through AI to be more all-encompassing and potentially more ethical. Rebecca, who has devoted much of her career to studying diversity and inclusion in imagery, noted that only using imagery from the past will perpetuate a lack of or issues in diversity and inclusion.

“In another five or 10 years, if we don’t think about the content that is going in, we’re still going to be creating the biases and the stereotypes [in AI-generated visuals],” Rebecca observed. “It’s not going to be the tool of the future; it’s going to be the tool that regurgitates the past. It’s really important that we think about the input, and the only way we can do that is to ensure we can continue to maintain creative communities.”

Getty Images’ philosophy:

Creator and model permission is a critical ethical component. The majority of artists — 89.2% —  believe copyright laws are currently inadequate in protecting their work from being exploited by generative AI. That’s why Getty Images resolved to only have the AI tool trained on creative content for artists who opt in and have the permission of the models within those visuals.

“It’s another kind of modern problem that we were trying to solve while accepting that AI-generated content is a thing of the future,” Rebecca said. “There are instances where it will serve a purpose, especially in ideation and creating content that doesn’t yet exist, but we also didn’t want to … create a rift between the community that is basically feeding the tool [by using content without permission].”

So should we use generative AI for creative purposes, such as imagery?

It’s a question being posed across industries and in organizations around the globe. The consensus seems to be that generative AI can be used as we recommend: a tool that can provide assistance in sparking an idea, inspiring a starting point to a creative piece, merging a large number of ideas or creative to generate a new one, or evaluating pros and cons.

It absolutely should not be used to replace human creativity and work in its entirety. Why? As Rebecca intimated, the input for generative AI is not good enough or ethically sourced at this point, leading to creative that is subpar, not unique enough and perpetuates existing biases, in some cases fully hallucinated or bizarre. It can also open users up to plagiarism, copyright issues, data privacy violations and more.

Similar to other tools, Getty Images’ AI tool allows users to create their own content or license existing images and modify them using AI. AI-modified content does not live on Getty Images’ site, and that’s the way they want to keep it, Rebecca said.

“We don’t want to confuse the experience of people coming to the site and have people searching to see if every image is AI or not. I want them to trust that it is not AI,” she noted.

While AI is the hot topic of the moment, it’s still true that there is no replacement for human creativity as you produce content from start to finish.

“From a creative point of view, it kind of looks like that’s all we care about because that’s all people are asking us about,” Rebecca said. “What we actually care about is authentic content that’s come from a diverse source of creators.”