Joshua Lanius
April 17, 2025
AI's Place in the Creative Process
AI is not as creative as me.
It can write, but not in a voice. It can generate images, but not ones that mean anything. It can fabricate stories, but they are likely poor concepts patched together from the stolen work of past artists.
Filmmaker and artist Hayao Miyazaki–the director of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and The Boy and the Heron–calls AI-generated art an “insult to life itself.”
But is it really?
Does this revolutionary tool have any place in the creative process?
Record producer and author Rick Rubin–known for Walk this Way, Someone Like You, and Hurt–breaks down the creative process into four phases in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. These phases are the Seed, Experimentation, Craft, and Completion.
The Seed comes from an artist living. It is the inkling of an idea. A thought the artist must give its attention to. The melody of a song. The idea for a character. The feeling of a photograph. AI is not living. It does not have ideas unless prompted. It has no thoughts.
Some argue that AI is a helpful tool to get ideas flowing. But if there is no idea, then there is no art. Without the Seed, the other steps are never taken.
I asked AI if it could generate original ideas. Its response was, “AI primarily works by analyzing and recombining existing data and patterns, lacking the consciousness, self-awareness, and intuitive leaps that characterize human creativity.”
That would be a no.
The second phase of the creative process is Experimentation. In this phase, the artist explores the idea. The illustrator sketches. The designer throws together a mockup. The screenwriter outlines their story. AI can generate images. AI can piece together a mockup. AI can create an outline.
What AI can create will not have the purity and realness of an artist’s experiments, but does that matter in the Experimentation stage? Is it helpful or detrimental for an artist to see the idea of their painting? Or some options for plot points within their story? Could AI be a cure for writer’s block? An artist must answer these questions for themself.
The third phase of the creative process is Craft. This is the phase where actual creation takes place. The art finally takes a more complete form.
“In terms of art created by AI, I don’t think we can call it art. I don’t see AI yet doing the kind of creative things we do,” architect Moshe Safdie said in an interview with The Harvard Gazette. “AI can imitate something that’s already been created and regurgitate it in another format, but that is not an original work.”
AI should not be used to create the art itself, because AI’s creations are, according to Safdie, not art. The Craft phase can be long and tiring, but for the output to be art, it must be human.
The fourth and final phase of the creative process is Completion. In this phase, the artist sees their completed piece. Maybe they share it with others. Their partner. Their editor. The world. Maybe they edit their work after feedback is given. Maybe they do not, because the feedback was given from someone who does not understand.
This is the phase where AI most belongs. Harvard University Information Technology writes, “AI can be a helpful partner in editing and enhancing your writing. You can paste in an email or document that you’re working on and ask the AI to suggest improvements, look for errors, assess flow and readability, and make suggestions of additional content.”
I use AI nearly every day. I will copy and paste this very article into ChatGPT and ask it to find errors before I share it. But I will not tell it to correct the mistakes. I will not have it expand for me. I will not have it rewrite anything. I will fix the errors myself. The writing will be mine. The ideas will be mine. The art will be mine.
AI is not as creative as me.