Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days. Like the advent of the internet before it, it is revolutionizing how we live, learn, and work. Unlike previous tools, however, it has the capability to create. Yes, anything it makes is based on what it has “learned” from other texts or images, but it can combine them in new ways and bring forth an innovative text or image.
Every day on Facebook, I get ads telling me how I can make easy money using AI to write books. Instead of using freelance writers, many companies are now using AI to create the texts that they need. AI is also being used to create videos, graphic designs, music, images for projects, and to code computer programs. As a creative person, it can be disheartening.
What is the point of creating if a machine can do it just as well (or at least good enough for people’s consumption) and more quickly? What does it mean if no one values my creative work enough to pay for it? These are questions with no easy answers, and I know I am not the only one wrestling with them.
However, creativity is written into our human DNA. We are made in the image and likeness of God, who is the ultimate Creator. Whether we think of ourselves as creative or not, we create every day. Every act we do and every word we say is an act of creation, either working to build up the kingdom of God or tear it down. God invites each of us to cooperate with and continue the process of creation that He began. We are called to use the gifts He has given us for good.
In his Letter to Artists, St. John Paul II wrote, “Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.” No AI tool can take that God-given gift and responsibility away from us. How we use our creative gifts may look different, but the need to create is still there.
A while back, I wrote The Work of Our Hands: The Universal Gift of Creativity, a thirty-one-day devotional on the importance of creativity to human life and the many shapes creative gifts can take. In it, I wrote, “There are over seven billion people in this world. It is easy to feel insignificant in the face of that knowledge. Yet, each one of us has a part to play in God’s magnificent symphony of life. We each have a note that only we can hit. Our creativity and contribution are needed to make the world complete. The right use of our creativity is one of our gifts back to God.” Even in the age of AI, that still holds true.
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