Some Thoughts on AI - From a Creative’s Perspective

by Mike Turner

Please welcome Mike Turner to finish out our series on Artificial Intelligence. As usual, Mike has an interesting point of view! Enjoy!

Some Thoughts on AI - From a Creative’s Perspective

by Mike Turner

Artificial Intelligence (AI): the term conjures a raft of thoughts in the creative community. Some see AI as an incredible tool to fuel research, design and innovation. Some believe AI pillages their copyrighted intellectual property.

Others are concerned AI will be used to replace writers, musicians, and artists with computer-generated content. Some think it will free up humans from manual drudgery to focus on creative endeavors; others fear the “computers” will take over, leaving humans to eke out a barren existence focused on physical labor in service to the “machines.”

In this blog I’ll touch on just a few of the myriad of aspects of AI and it’s impact on us as writers, with some of my thoughts and observations as I, like you, try to navigate the mine field that is Artificial Intelligence.

Because AI is here, and it’s not going away. Buckle up…

What Is AI? How Does It Work?

Let’s start by examining what AI is - not a definition, per se, but rather in the context of how it operates. I see AI as the latest evolution of our practices in educating ourselves, particularly in terms of researching topics to incorporate into our writing projects.

Think back to the “traditional” ways of doing research: we’d go to a library to find primary and secondary sources of information on the topic we’d chosen to learn about. We’d read newspaper/magazine articles and books; examine photographs; watch films and tapings of television shows; listen to audio recordings. We might personally interview experts on our topic and participants in/witnesses to historical events, and visit actual sites. All along the way we’d take notes of facts, quotes, impressions and ideas which we could incorporate into our written products.

This process was vastly simplified when the Internet came along - now, instead of traveling to libraries and other locations, we could sit at our desks and gather/review many of the same materials by computer. Today we can interact with an expert on the other side of the globe, real-time, with a device we can hold in our hands. Search engines like Google can lead us to sources of information we might otherwise never have known existed; compendiums like Wikipedia can give us consolidated overviews of complex topics and events with reference to primary and secondary sources for more information.

AI takes all this to the next level: it’s like Wikipedia on steroids, and can in seconds scan the Internet, consolidate multiple sources of information on the topic we’ve inquired about, and produce a short, readable digest of our topic (and supply the citations for its research, if we but ask).

The key here - and this is important to more of our discussion below - is that AI at present doesn’t perform any original research: it doesn’t reach out and interview primary sources of information (it’s not a stretch to envision that, in the not too distant future, AI will do so - it can already compile lists or recommended questions for a human interviewer to ask; how far away can it be for AI to take the next step of creating a virtual interviewer to interact directly with an interviewee?).

So we can immediately see one tremendous benefit of AI: it can provide much more information; from many more sources; far more quickly, efficiently and cheaply than our old-style “research” methods. There’s a reason that libraries replaced their old Dewey Decimal card catalogs with computerized search engines - and AI is a quantum leap beyond scanning webpages found through Google searches, and reading Wikipedia pages for getting lots of information, fast.

So, What’s Good and Bad About That?

We’ve already discussed a lot of the “good” of AI: more sources; more information; generated far more quickly, efficiently and cheaply.

And AI learns as it goes - ask it a question today, and you’ll get an answer; ask again next week, and it will consider whatever new information it may find that’s been generated since the last query (a new newspaper or magazine article, a new film or interview) and incorporate it into it’s new answer to our questions - perhaps even radically revising its “report” based on new information (consider, as an example: if I ask AI today for a report on the search for extraterrestrial life, I’ll get one reply; if next week, aliens land on Earth and invite us to join the Galactic Federation, AI’s answer will be considerably altered. It will “learn” from the new information available to it).

And “bad”? At present, AI lacks some critical thinking/analytical and intuitive processes to recognize false/incorrect information it “learns” in its research. For example, earlier this month, folk musician Janis Ian found an on-line, AI-generated biography that incorrectly conflated her first husband and her current wife, who share a similar surname. Anyone even remotely familiar with Ian and her story would almost immediately spot the inaccuracy - but AI did not. So at present, we see that AI hasn’t yet “learned” the art of separating fact from fiction (this is of course no different from a human researcher making the same mistake - but the danger comes in our relying on AI’s “answer” as correct, without any type of independent verification).

It also pays to note that, in its reviews and digests of sources on the Internet, AI pays little heed to copyright ownership of the information it uses. Many authors are concerned that AI is being “trained”, not just in content but in style, with their copyrighted material, without their permission. This is certainly a concern in the literary world - although it’s certainly nothing new. How many of us knew, in junior high school, students who got into trouble for copying essays out of the encyclopedia? How many would-be authors turned to tales of sorcery and magic after the rollicking success of the Harry Potter novels? It’s no accident that copyright law is a huge segment of the legal profession. AI isn’t too much different in this regard.

“Creation” vs. “Generation” As we’ve already said, AI doesn’t conduct any “original” research - it doesn’t interview primary sources of information, for example (at least, not yet). AI takes existing information - at times, massive amounts of it - and distills it into a readily consumable product on a given topic. So from this perspective, one could say that AI only “generates” content based upon other, existing content - it doesn’t “create” anything new that never before existed.

BUT… from a philosophical point of view, is anything ever really “new”? Or, as Shakespeare said, is there, ‘nothing new under the sun’ (and it pays to recognize that Shakespeare drew that phrase from the Biblical Ecclesiastes, thus proving his own point…)? Even such an acclaimed creative talent as Bob Dylan, freely tells us of the influences on his lyrics and compositions (the entire oral storytelling tradition, both in prose and song, is one of repeating, embellishing and adapting what had been heard by others). George Harrison of The Beatles famously based one of his greatest works, “Something,” on a line in a James Taylor song (“Something in the way she moves…”); and was successfully sued for copyright infringement for his song’s, “My Sweet Lord” lifting of melodic elements of The Chiffon’s “He’s So Fine.”

Or consider painting - the Masters found new ways of depicting color and light to give us the grandeur of DaVinci, the soul of Van Gogh - but used existing colors and forms to do so, albeit in new ways. Even artists radically departing from the Masters, from Dali to Picasso to Mondrian to Pollack, still used existing colors, shapes and forms to do so.

So are we to say that artists like Dylan, Harrison, Picasso, Pollack, have created something “new”, and yet AI has not? Is not all that is “new”, evolutionary in the sense that it has some basis in what has come before?

Just this week (week of July 20, 2025), news outlets are reporting that researchers have used AI to create a new metal alloy matrix, never before seen, that is stronger and lighter than aluminum and titanium. Are we to say that AI only “generated” this new alloy, or is it a new creation?

As a thought exercise: what if we ask AI to combine colors to give us a new shade of blue, never before seen by the human eye? In responding, will AI “create” something “new?”

What of the Creators?

Which brings us to a central concern in creative circles: will AI replace creatives? Will today’s artists, writers, composers, sculptors, be out of a job?

I believe the answer is both complex and troubling - for while I don’t know that AI will “replace” creatives, I think AI will rival its human creative “peers” in creating content, particularly in the marketplace. Because if we accept our earlier argument, that AI can, in fact, “create” something new (albeit based on what has come before), then, clearly, we will have “AI creations.”

Here we once again bump up against philosophy, or perhaps merely semantics: if something “new” is “created,” then it must have a “creator.” Ergo, if AI creates something “new,” then AI is, by logic, a “creative.”

This concept frightens a lot of creatives. As a creative myself (poems and songs, mostly, along with the occasional drabble and essay like this one), I feel more pragmatic, and I’ll tell you why: I am compelled to write what I write, partly as a way of understanding myself and the world I find myself in; partly to connect with others who may feel the same way I do. I think a lot of creatives are driven by the same impulses, which are part of the human condition - and those impulses are not going to go away just because there’s an AI out there also producing content, any more than those impulses are lessened just because there are other human poets and songwriters already out there doing the same thing I’m doing.

Because no one will ever feel things in the same way I feel them, or express those feelings as I do - this uniqueness is the very essence of the creative experience, and in that regard, AI just becomes one more “creative,” along with me, looking for understanding and connection in the vast sea of humanity.

I do believe some people will use AI, not as a tool for furthering understanding and connection, but as a quick way to generate content for commercial purposes (i.e., to make a buck). I don’t know many, if any, writers who are driven by commercial/profit motives in their writing, but I imagine there are some out there - I’ve certainly known some in the songwriting world, who are solely in it for fame, adulation and cash. And so, I think true  “creatives” will find our works in competition with AI-generated product.

This brings us to what may be the most telling aspect of the AI debate:

The Consumer Rules

Earlier this month, Rolling Stone magazine broke an interesting story: a new rock band, Velvet Sundown, had achieved more than a half million “streams” (listens) of it’s new release on Spotify. And then the truth came out: Velvet Sundown is a totally AI-generated product, from its songwriting to its musical recordings to its band members’ bios and images; all completely AI-generated as an “art hoax”.

Thing is, the listeners didn’t care. In fact, they’re still listening to the songs (truth is, I’ve listened, and I kind of like them, too - they’re a little formulaic and shallow to me in their lyrics and structure, but I can say the same thing about a lot of human musicians, too).

I think this is why AI, and AI-produced product, will always be with us: consumers don’t care about who and how creative product is made, so much as how much they like the creative product itself. We see this in other, non-AI aspects of consumer culture - many people want given features in their big-screen TV or car, and are less concerned about where that product is produced (yes, there are some people who have a preference for “Made in the USA” products, but many more who do not - just look at what’s flying off the shelves at Walmart, particularly consumer electronics, most of which is not made in the US.) Consumers care about features and price, not so much whether the item is made in South Korea or China or wherever.

And so if people like a good story, or song, or poem, they may not much care if it was produced with human hands or AI bits-and-bytes. Will an AI-produced novel be as “good” as a human-written one? Here, let’s be honest: some writers are better than others. I’m a fan of time-travel stories, and I’ve read some that are far superior to others in terms, not just plot and character,  but in writer’s craft. For me, a story stands and falls on its own merits - I may be encouraged to read more of a given author if I like a story they’ve written; but I’ve also read some sequels that disappointed me as being vastly inferior to earlier entries in the series. AI won’t be any different in this regard.

What of the “Support Network”?

I think one area of the literature “business” that may be particularly vulnerable to competition from AI, may be in what I’d call the “support network”: editors, book formatters, cover art creators and the like. Writers are already using some rudimentary AI products in our writing - things like Spellcheck and Grammarly; apps like Canva to create cover art. I suspect that AI-enhanced versions of these and other such editing/publishing apps will become great tools to free indie authors from the traditional publishing world.

Which of course means that the traditional publishing world will be impacted by such competition with AI’s services.

And I wonder what the bane of so many of us writers - marketing and promotion - will look like when its driven by AI? Today I received a two very nice, personalized emails from two different marketers, praising my book Visions and Memories (with some semi-specific critique of some of its poems, and references to some of my awards from my bio), and offering to connect me with book clubs, libraries and similar groups that might purchase the book for their use. They’re great notes - and they’re obviously AI-generated, not just in their writing, but clearly in the research that went into generating them: somebody somewhere told AI to do a web crawl for poetry books that met certain criteria that might be ripe for a promotional approach; added some semi-generic praise of my content, and cross-referenced to my bio (including some bio references that are very recent, as opposed to my book’s four-year-plus publication date). I’m impressed - and I think this is just a sample of what AI-based marketing and promotion is going to look like, both in terms of the new “support network” soliciting me for its services, as well as how we writers might manage AI-driven marketing/promotion to identify, target and contact potential readers and audiences.

We’re already seeing such AI-service competition in the songwriting world. Home studio recording had already had a big impact on the recording industry: why pay for studio time when I can achieve comparable results with a good microphone and a laptop in my bedroom? Why pay studio musicians to play on my recordings when I can get great sounds from instrument samples run through a digital-audio workstation? There are even products out there that can take me from literally humming into a microphone to a full orchestral performance.

And AI-products are now coming on-line that will mix and master my home recordings to radio/CD/streaming quality in an instant - threatening another whole industry of studio engineers and producers who currently depend on that work for their livelihood.

The Bottom Line

I think it all comes down to this: AI is here to stay, and we as creatives need to deal with it. AI will lead to significant changes in the literary industry, from the creation of written product to publishing, marketing and promotion.

Will AI eliminate human creatives? No - because there will always be people (like me, and like many of you reading this) who are driven to create, as our way of understanding ourselves and connecting with people and the world around us. Will our works “compete” with AI-produced product for readers in the marketplace? Absolutely.

Should we be afraid of AI? No. I think we have to embrace it - we don’t want to be like troglodytes who clung to styluses and cuneiform tablets when the rest of the literary world moved on to ink and papyrus!

I even have hope that AI will lead to new directions and new opportunities for human creativity - but only if we adapt and evolve to the changes AI is surely going to make with those who read what we write, and who listen to what we have to say.

No AI was used in the writing of this blog post

BIO: Mike Turner was named 2025 Poet of the Year by the Alabama State Poetry Society, for his contributions to Alabama’s poets and poetry. He has more than 450 poems published in over 100 curated literary journals/sites and anthologies, and dozens of original songs on Spotify, YouTube and other streaming services. Mike’s poetry anthology, Visions and Memories, is available on Amazon.