Farah Nehme, employer engagement adviser at Kingston University, explores the opportunities that GenAI is opening up for graduates in the creative industries and the ongoing importance of human collaboration
Generative AI (GenAI) is here to stay, sparking a sense of 'wonderpanic' while driving a paradigm shift in how artists and designers work.1 As in many other industries, this technology is changing the job market for experienced workers and graduates, stirring big discussions around the possibilities and perils it brings. This article examines how GenAI is transforming the creative industries and the enduring importance of human collaboration.
How GenAI is changing the creative job market
GenAI's integration into tools like Adobe Creative Cloud and AutoCAD is boosting efficiency and augmenting artistic capabilities. Innovative GenAI applications such as Runway Gen 2, Midjourney, Sisense AI, and ChatGPT are revolutionising audio-visual arts, creative writing, and data analysis. As businesses invest in AI platforms, notable shifts are occurring across various creative fields:
- Marketing and advertising - GenAI enhances content creation and analyses large datasets to optimise marketing strategies. Brands like Heinz and McDonald's have launched AI-driven campaigns, demonstrating GenAI's transformative potential.
- UX/UI design - GenAI accelerates the creation of wireframes, design mock-ups, and user interfaces, generating multiple design variants quickly. This speeds up ideation, prototyping, and testing, making the design process more efficient.
- Gaming - developers leverage GenAI to craft immersive virtual worlds and adapt gameplay based on player behaviour. This increases player engagement and satisfaction, significantly enhancing the gaming experience.
- Visual arts - GenAI has sparked debate within the visual arts community, particularly concerning copyright issues, as AI models often train on existing artworks without proper credit or compensation. While some artists resist this shift, others collaborate with GenAI to create innovative art, as demonstrated by artists like Janson M. Allen and Mario Klingemann.
- Museums and galleries - GenAI is reforming art and introducing new methods of curation and exhibition, broadening the scope of artistic display and experience.
- Architecture - from urban planning to interior design, GenAI streamlines design processes and introduces new paradigms in sustainable, user-centric design.
- Music and writing are becoming more democratised as GenAI lowers barriers to entry, enabling more people to produce professional-grade work with fewer resources. While GenAI could reduce the demand for established roles across the creative industries, it also creates opportunities for new careers such as AI content strategists, prompt engineers, and AI ethics consultants.
Graduates and experienced professionals must embrace these new tools and understand their role in a collaborative human-AI ecosystem.
The role of human collaboration
Despite GenAI's capabilities, human collaboration remains essential for its successful and ethical deployment. AI can produce biased content, infringe on copyrights, spread misinformation, and harm the environment. These concerns highlight the need for human oversight to refine AI outputs and ensure responsible use. Creatives must not only master technical skills but also hone soft skills such as critical thinking, adaptability, cultural competence, and emotional intelligence.
The rise of GenAI also underscores long-standing issues in the creative job market, such as fair compensation and intellectual property protection. Freelancers, who make up a large portion of the creative workforce, are particularly vulnerable, especially as GenAI levels the playing field between highly skilled and less skilled individuals. This calls for collaboration between creative communities and policymakers to establish regulations that protect authorship and livelihoods.
GenAI is reshaping creative jobs, altering team structures, impacting self-employment, and creating new job roles. To remain relevant, both graduates and experienced professionals must embrace these new tools and understand their role in a collaborative human-AI ecosystem. Beyond digital skills, the future of creativity will depend on the human qualities that AI cannot replicate.
Useful resources
- Let's Talk: AI. A School of Design Event Publication, Kingston University, 2024.
- How Generative AI is Changing Creative Work, Harvard Business Review, 2022.
- Artists claim "big" win in copyright suit fighting AI image generators, arstechnica, 2024.
- Heinz A.I. Ketchup, Campaigns of the World, 2022.
This article was first published in the 2024/25 edition of What do graduates do?
Notes
- The Wizard of AI, Single Channel HD Video Essay, Alan Warbuton, 2023.
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