Creativity has historically meant the possession of unique capability and imagination to make things better than anyone else. Its value lived in the difficult act of making. To paint well required skill. To write beautifully took time. To design required knowledge.

Creativity was inseparable from execution, because execution was the constraint. The audience’s appreciation lived in the perceived challenge or originality of what was on offer: they can what I cannot.

AI breaks that link.

In a world of abundant creation, where images, text, music and ideas are produced endlessly, immediately, effortlessly and by anyone, what space remains for traditional creativity? And if creating becomes easy, does it lose its value?

From creators to curators

I say ‘traditional’ because creativity may soon be less about the possession of enviable talents and singular skills, and more to do with the ability to effectively prompt, synthesise and decide. From makers to editors. Creators to curators.

These new skills demand a deep understanding of context and consequence. They mean saying no more often than yes. They rely on taste, judgement, ownership and responsibility above skill, originality and imagination. 

Traditional creativity has always been a necessary ingredient of creation: designing, making, scoring, building. This new definition means creativity increasingly happens after creation: analysing, editing, curating.

Not addition, but subtraction. Editing is creation. Selection becomes taste.

The problem with having it all

LLMs will offer endless variations, articulations and iterations. But without a critical eye they blend into a bland pool of ‘unspiration’. Accurate, concise but hollow. Wholly reliant on the past without much to say about the future. AI can generate infinite options, but it can’t tell you which ones matter. And so, clever application of its outputs may become as desirable as art once was. Prompts and platforms are the new paints and canvas.

Indeed, as I wrote last year on the possible future of artificial creativity, the ability to edit, prompt, synthesise and provoke may soon be more desirable than the talent to draw, the imagination to romanticise, or the capacity for prose. 

A new kind of creativity

It may seem I’m suggesting creativity is doomed. Quite the opposite. But it might become something else.

If making is unbound and creation is unending, then the art is in having something to say and knowing how to say it.

In fact, I’d argue it is AI’s democratisation of creativity and tendency towards sameness that raises the value of genuine artistry: novel skill, exceptional talent, inspiration and imagination. The ability to conjure that which never was. A different kind of creativity, but perhaps a kind more important than ever before.