AI almost killed my joy of creation

Art has been a huge part of my life. The process of making something.. Out of nowhere has been like magic too me. To be able to sit down, with a blank canvas with nothing on it.. And then make something out of nowhere! A cool dragon, a face showing an expression, some abnormal fictional creature.. It is a perfect way to be able to express yourself, dump your mind and feelings onto a paper and then move on.

I really appreciate the joy of creation. Sitting down with an idea in your head, grabbing a pencil or a brush and go wild! Creating is a process of doing something, finding problems, solving them with the best of your ability, then doing something again. Or do like me, do a lot of things, work through the problems later 🤷 Doing this to the point of spiraling into "The zone" is the best feeling ever. When time flies by, slowly but surely you can see and feel the progress becoming something you can be proud of. This feeling is what I believe a lot of creative creators is always hunting for.

Creation is not only something you do physically, but of course something you can do digitally! For example, moving from traditional art to digital art! Or.. Coding!

The joy of creation

Coding

I used to love coding. I loved it so much. It is still a new skill to me since I learned it in 2021, but sitting down with an IDE ready to run whatever weird nonsense you made is the coolest feeling ever. "Ohh! I want to make a word-list generator!" or "Ohh, I want to make a Runescape Grand exchange marked analyzer!" then go through all the loops, problems and error messages until.. It is working!

This is at least how it used to be. Since I started learning coding in 2021, it did not take long before AI joined the game. In the beginning, I thought it was fun and a little goofy. I remember I made a simple Quiz app for my teacher that was XSS vulnerable, then asked GPT 3 to identify and patch the vulnerability, but all it did was to add hashing to the quiz answers. All fun and games, but I realized that this is still the beginning of something big.

So I made a rule for myself. I will implement AI into the coding process to take care of the "boring" work. "Make a template I can use for X", "Can you fill this for me?" and minor inconvenience tasks I did not mind losing. But every now and then when I gave an LLM my code, it would come with other suggestions. "Here is a suggested reformat of your X function", "I also split your function into smaller more readable functions and added comments". Something I did not ask for, but appreciated as it helped speed up my work.

But this grew on me, slowly but surely. I let it write more and more code for me, let it add comments, documentation etc etc.. To the point of me.. Not really feeling any ownership of the projects I was working on anymore. Suddenly coding was a means to an end, not something I enjoyed doing.

Suddenly I asked myself the question.. "Why bother improving my coding skills.. When AI can do it for me?".

A story in parallel

"Why bother improving my drawing skills.. When AI can do it for me?" is a question that killed my interest in drawing for a long time. Why bother picking up your pencil and make a drawing, that would take your hours to do and the end result would be "okay", when you could simply prompt it and get something way "better" within seconds?

I stopped drawing. I stopped watching and enjoying others art for a long time. Thinking art would slowly but surely die out as AI got better and better. Years went by, my art skills withered as the AIs "art skills" improved. I prompted art for this blog website, seeing AI art as the new norm. (Especially working in IT where AI is everywhere).

One day when we were doing a deep clean and a minor renovation at home, about a year ago, I found my old art chest. A huge chest with every single drawing and painting I had made physically in a "cold storage". I dug through the art and loved what I saw. Drawings that was created because of passion, the will to learn and the joy of simply creating anything. Silly dragons that looked cool, crazy hair, cartoony expressions lines and colors everywhere!

I was so happy when I saw all of this. It sparked a long lost joy that I only get when making something for the sake of making or learning. So I started thinking.. "What was my purpose making all of this?". Why would I spend hours making art of things that did not matter in the grand scheme?

You can find a lot of purpose in creating. Mine is:

1. Ownership

2. Problem solving skills

3. Being able to focus for a long time

4. Learn to enjoy the imperfections

I am by all means not a good artist. Neither will I ever be. But I really do love drawing. I love drawing as much as I love coding. Because both disciplines strengthen my problem solving skills, creativity and focus! Ultimately leading to the epic "Look at what I made" moment, that gives me more joy than anything in this world.

My purpose for creating is enjoying the moment, make something for myself or someone I love or appreciate having in my life, and of course, solving problems!

The purpose of creating

The conclusion

Artificial art has its purpose. If you are making a LinkedIn post that feels bland, and you want to spice it up with a cool elements, but do not have the skill to make it yourself, have friends or professional connections to help you out, or simply do not want to invest any time of effort into your post, then artificial content is perfect!

It is like ordering fast food. You do not want to spend time and effort making something for yourself, or order anything made by professionals. You simply want something that tastes well with the snap of your finger (Or beep of your card). Is there anything wrong with this? No, absolutely not. Is it good for you? It tastes good yes, but it is still not good for you. Especially if you do it every single day.

AI almost killed a large part of my creative self. Almost removing what I enjoy the most in this world. But I will not let it. I will use AIs as what I view them as, great advisors and sparring partners. I will let them guide me and help me find the answers I need, but I will not let them do my work for me. At least do my best avoiding it.

So yeah.. That is my new year resolution! Less AI in my everyday and more proper problem solving and learning! :]

Side note:
As a result of this change, I am in the process of swapping out AI generated content on my blog with actual art. Either ordered by real artists or made myself!