AI Is Creative. Now What?
I grew up on Star Wars and Ray Harryhausen, and the Atari 2600. Back in the 70s, the idea of a machine that could write stories or generate art was pure sci-fi, the kind of thing that got you chased by replicants or trapped in the Matrix.
But here we are.
There's this persistent myth floating around creative circles that AI will never be truly creative. It can't suffer. It hasn't had its heart broken. It's never sat in a crappy apartment at 3 AM wondering if it made the wrong career choice.
I get it. I've spent 20+ years in scibble rooms where the best ideas came from someone's childhood trauma or custody battle with their ex. But I can't ignore what I see happening right now:
AI is already creative. Just not how we expected it would be.
Patterns and Connections
So I was watching this interview with Geoffrey Hinton (one of the AI godfathers), and he said something that resonated with me: AI is creative because it can draw analogies. It spots connections between things that seem completely unrelated—and it does this faster and on a way bigger scale than our bacon brains can handle.
Think about what we actually do when we're being creative. When I'm breaking a story for TV or designing a game narrative, I'm basically playing this massive multiplayer game with my own memories and obsessions. That movie I saw as a kid. That smelly guy in line at the New Beverly. That dream I had about Godzilla.
I'm looking for patterns. Making connections. AI does likewise with billions of inputs and no need for Adderall refills.
What It Can't Do (Yet)
AI doesn't know which connections matter.
It might generate 100 story ideas, but it doesn't know which one will make you cry or laugh or stay up all night thinking about it. It doesn't know which character feels relatable, relevant, and true.
That's still our domain.
So here's the big shift: we're not fighting against AI, we're jamming with it, like having a super-fast, slightly unpredictable writing partner who never complains about ordering Domino’s for the third night in a row.
The New Creative Workflow
For those of us working in storytelling, whether you're writing scripts, designing game worlds, or pitching new shows, you don't have to hand over the keyboard. You need to update your toolbox.
Feed the machine YOUR stuff. I've found it gets WAY better when it knows your voice.
Ask it weird questions like, "What if this character had grown up in the 70s instead of the 90s?" "What's the connection between Blade Runner and my childhood dog?"
Let it rapid-prototype ideas, then YOU decide which ones have that spark of life.
Give it permission to surprise you by asking for novel responses, but remember, you're still calling the shots.
Humans in the Loop
My ADHD brain sees patterns everywhere; it's my superpower and my kryptonite. When I look at a whiteboard covered in story beats, I don't see the separate ingredients; I see the whole enchilada.
AI is like that, but with access to practically everything ever written or created. It's a pattern-recognition machine on steroids.
But it doesn't know why a story matters. It doesn't have skin in the game. It doesn't care.
We do.
The future isn't about resisting these tools; it's about learning how to play with them in a way that amplifies what makes us uniquely human: our lived experience, our weird obsessions, our ability to know when something just — feels right.
Stay creative. Stay weird. Keep scribbling stuff that matters.
