How AI will help people be more creative
Here’s why Adobe’s Chris Duffey thinks AI as a collaborator could take human creativity and productivity to new heights.
The explosion of artificial intelligence developments, specifically generative AI, has created hope and fear for people, especially creatives, about how it could affect their work and their livelihoods. Chris Duffey, strategic development for Adobe Creative Cloud at Adobe, thinks professions of all kinds will benefit from viewing AI as a co-pilot. A strategic futurist, Duffey speaks from experience. He credits AI as his co-author for his 2019 book “Superhuman Innovation” on how AI could revolutionize business.
Kate MacArthur: AI is trained on human-generated content. What happens when it starts getting trained on AI-generated derivatives?
Chris Duffey: I tend to gravitate toward more of a protopian narrative where technology is introducing incremental change to our lives. If you look back across all these introductions of new technologies, that’s where the true pattern is.
MacArthur: Is AI improving human creativity or replacing human creativity?
Duffey: I believe with 100% certainty we’re entering the Golden Age of creativity. That’s where AI excels and can really speed up things to allow what people do best. We do critical thinking. We do higher-level problem-solving.
“I believe with 100% certainty we’re entering the Golden Age of creativity. That’s where AI excels and can really speed up things to allow what people do best. We do critical thinking. We do higher-level problem-solving.”
MacArthur: How do you see this tension between AI creating or replacing creative jobs playing out?
Duffey: I would encourage others to think of generative AI as another tool within a creator’s tool belt to solve business problems and solutions. We’ll see an evolution of the nature of jobs with this ability to free up time for greater innovation.
MacArthur: What are the ethical considerations for how tech companies should be considering this?
Duffey: You referenced what happens when the AI system is training off an image that’s been previously generated. At Adobe, our system only trains off originally sourced images. So, there won’t be that complication from our standpoint. Another aspect is when does an image become a new image? We’re at this inflection point where everyone has the true power to help shape the future as they would like to see it.
MacArthur: Let’s talk for a second about the Supreme Court case over the Andy Warhol painting of Prince. What would a roadmap look like for how to manage intellectual property issues that AI tools can create?
Duffey: I’ve started looking into some historical cases on music licensing which can be a source of where things are going for when is something IP-ownable and when is something potentially inspired by, but not similar. That gets into quite complex legalities and agreement on what those are. It gets infinitely more complex when you talk about arts in IP. We’re entering this new era of rights management, and some argue “left management.” Some are advocating we’re potentially, at some point, moving into a left-managed system, where there’s this acknowledgement that when you put out content, it might be referenced in some ways going forward.
MacArthur: How do businesses need to think to keep AI from becoming a disinformation nightmare?
Duffey: The presence of traceability within a ledger enables you to identify the origin of content, thus establishing its credibility. So, it becomes possible to determine whether the content has been manipulated. By effectively identifying and verifying this data, you can achieve a significant reduction in the dissemination of misinformation, thereby fostering a more informed future.
MacArthur: As the ability improves for people to manipulate, expand on or riff off content, what will brands need to understand to use AI ethically?
Duffey: I recently authored a book titled “Decoding the Metaverse,” which explores the concept of the metaverse as an organic progression towards a more immersive and engaging experience. Simultaneously, this is where businesses can begin to embrace some of the foundational principles of Web3. These include co-ownership and co-monetization, which enable the creation of fandom, the establishment of co-monetization models, and ultimately drive an innovative and thriving creator economy. Consequently, I posit that AI will be instrumental in realizing this visionary future for businesses.
MacArthur: How do those conversations get built so that there’s a level of fairness, recognizing who’s the pilot and who’s the co-pilot?
Duffey: That’s a foundational question that will probably get defined by the platform. This is where I truly believe the creators have greater influence, greater leverage than ever before because of brands that understand that they need to leverage their community even more. That will be an evolution as we go.
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