Episode 61: Is AI Our Ultimate Creative Partner or Our Replacement?

Episode 61

Is AI Our Ultimate Creative Partner or Our Replacement?

Greg, Alessandra, Devin, Bailey, and Shadows Pub explore whether AI enhances or threatens creativity. From overcoming energy slumps to crafting professional visuals without traditional skills, each shares personal experiences and tools they love.

Key themes include:

• AI as an “extra power supply” for creativity
   
• Prompt engineering as an emerging art
   
• Leveraging AI for teaching, editing, and marketing
   
• Balancing opportunity with ethical and legal awareness
   

Quote of the Day:

"AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t." – Ginni Rometty

Join the conversation at https://creativeworkhour.com and share how AI fits into your creative process.

Greg

00:03 - 00:24

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is August the 9th, 2025. And in the room today, you have myself, Greg, we have Alessandra, we have Devin, Bailey, and Shadow Pub, and it's episode 61. Can you believe that?

Greg

00:24 - 00:42

Where does the time go? I do not know. And today's discussion is actually right on time, The chat GPT 5 has just been released. And some people have been talking about that and people have an opinion, be good, bad or indifferent.

Greg

00:42 - 00:59

And so today we thought we would ask, is AI our ultimate creative partner or a replacement? That kind of sounds very sinister, doesn't it? I'll read that again. Is AI our ultimate creative partner or our replacement?

Greg

00:59 - 01:25

And so I can kind of see all kinds of Conspiracy thoughts and theories going on with this, but it is a creative tool, nevertheless. And Alessandra, we were talking about this before, and there's a really good quote on this as well. And it's by the former CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty. And he said, AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don't.

Greg

01:26 - 01:32

So I don't know what you think about that. But, Alessandra, this gave some really great conversation, didn't it?

Alessandra

01:33 - 01:49

Well, it did. And, you know, there is the, you know, the Echmakena film and that relationship with AI personified. There's that kind of element. Yeah.

Alessandra

01:50 - 02:21

You kind of get the sinister, you get the drama, you get all of that. But the way that I am Keeping AI in my life is, you know, it's not very complicated. It's pretty very basic, but I am using ChatGPT. I've used ChatGPT probably three times before I have my first cup of coffee in the morning because it is just part of the layout of how I think.

Alessandra

02:21 - 03:03

The energy that I always wish that I had for using in my note-taking tools was always like the energy I only had on my very best days. And so there was a lot of really good thinking on days that I just didn't have it all together that I really wouldn't be able to note. Now, so if you're having a dippy day, who's to say you could be having your most remarkable cognitive breakthroughs, you just happen to feel like not great on that day. So I like a tool that meets me where I am with my energy level.

Alessandra

03:04 - 03:33

So if I am not doing great, it's equally accessible to me as the days when I'm knocking it out of the park. And I can do that with chat GPT. And I love that they are making big leaps and bounds of updates and improvements based on what they're having. Now, do they have big boogers?

Alessandra

03:33 - 03:53

Yes, they do. And sometimes you can use chat GPT to solve problems you're having with chat GPT, which I love that. I love the meta of that. But basically, I love it for how it helps me to leverage my energy so that I can get the creative work done.

Alessandra

03:54 - 04:32

Because that's where my life feedback loop works positively, is when I'm able to do the creative work, then come good day or bad, I can look at the evidence of where I showed up in the world. whether it was to play classical music on or off the stage, whether it was to help another creative break through or get over some hurdle. So it may sound like high tech, but really I'm just using it as an extra power supply. That's my take on it.

Alessandra

04:32 - 04:33

But how about you, Greg?

Greg

04:35 - 04:54

You know, I use, I have a brain injury, very high functioning with it. And how I use AI is to help gather my thoughts. So because of my brain injury, I struggle with memory, long-term memory. And so trying to recite stories or remember when this happened, and it was Thursday afternoon, the wind was blowing.

Greg

04:55 - 05:08

And I can't do all that like some people do. So my writing tends to be almost academic. It's like researched and almost like a journalist might do it. And that's just the way that I've adapted.

Greg

05:08 - 05:31

So my thoughts could be scattered all over the place, jump back and forth, not really following any sequence. But I can do a bunch of research, get my stuff together and say, this is what I'm trying to say. Can you organize this into a logical? stream, you know, a cohesive list that reads well, you know, so it'll take what I've done and clean it up.

Greg

05:31 - 05:49

It's not unlike someone would perhaps use Grammarly or Ginger or Wordtune or something like that, right? It's just another tool. And so I like this question, is AI our ultimate creative partner or is it a replacement? I certainly don't think it's a replacement, but I think it's a good partner.

Greg

05:50 - 06:12

You there's an old adage garbage in and garbage out. And I don't really like the saying, but it's very true. And it's all about prompting and what you ask of the AI, you can, you can reword a sentence and get a very different result from it. And I think there's almost like an art form developing in prompt engineering.

Greg

06:12 - 06:30

And that's an actual thing. I don't know if you've heard of prompt engineering, but companies are looking for people who are really good at commanding and steering AI to get the results they want from it. So that's kind of my take. But Shadows, I know that you're a power user when it comes to AI with image generation.

Greg

06:30 - 06:46

But I also know that you spend, oh my gosh, hundreds of hours behind the scenes in coming up with how you ask the questions of it. It's not just about AI. So I'd be interested on your take on this. Is AI our ultimate creative partner or a replacement?

Shadows Pub

06:48 - 07:33

Well, I'll be a little on the stop side. If AI is going to replace me for creativity, I wasn't very creative. So I would say it's my actual partner. I'm And when I come up with a potential product, then it's a conversation about the viability of that product and the style of that product and how it's being put together.

Shadows Pub

07:34 - 07:58

And then when I've got the product figured out, then it's the description for the product, how we're going to approach that. And then we come down to the marketing of the product. And it can create material for Pinterest in a fraction of the time that it would take me. So yes, it's very much a creative partner.

Shadows Pub

07:59 - 08:01

In a sense, the creative team. I

Greg

08:04 - 08:32

like that, I like that. And you do, we've talked about this on the podcast before, Daily Echoes, and that's where you come up with, you know, an image each day. And oh my gosh, the work behind that, I don't know without, you know, taking too much time, What does, can you kind of do an elevator speech on what the workflow looks like for that? I know that I'm asking the impossible, but just to demonstrate, you know, how much actually goes into steering the AI, right?

Shadows Pub

08:33 - 08:47

Well, first of all, we start with the words. We're going to need the definition of the word and how it's utilized. And then we're going to need images, potential images for the word. And then a process to select the final image.

Shadows Pub

08:48 - 09:12

And then once that's selected, then we need the symbolism and understanding behind that image and the word. And then we need the quote, we need the comment. That's just to get the daily epilogue. I actually sent ChatGPT 4.0 almost into a little giddy tizzy the other night.

Shadows Pub

09:12 - 09:14

I had to actually laugh at that.

Greg

09:15 - 09:16

Do share what

Shadows Pub

09:16 - 09:37

happened. I have a Goldbrunch room in which I display a gallery of printables. Which I'm going to be revamping for the next Expo. And when I mentioned about Goldbrunch and the fact that I have a cafe there that I invite people to come to to stay in touch from my email list.

Shadows Pub

09:38 - 10:07

It was very specific, like you use the cafe for conversation, you use the gallery for viewing. And it dawned on me that but the chat GPT didn't have the awareness that Gold Brunch is a place where people can talk. It's a world is world building. So I explained that to it and I showed it a screenshot of my gallery room and pointed out that the circles in there were where people could actually talk while they were looking at the gallery.

Shadows Pub

10:08 - 10:32

That sent chat GPT off into a bit of a monologue about how I'm ahead of the game. That's a whole new dimension on presentation and marketing. And then I need to call all my rooms related to that the echo verse, not even talk about go brunch, just call it the echo verse. It was actually quite funny watching the screens of material that popped up.

Greg

10:33 - 10:38

That's brilliant. The echo verse. I love that. Absolutely awesome.

Shadows Pub

10:38 - 10:38

I

Alessandra

10:39 - 10:42

was just gonna say it was chappy chat GPT going.

Shadows Pub

10:43 - 10:54

Wow. If the way it was putting the material out there, it was almost like that's exactly what it was doing. It was hilarious. I'd never seen that reaction.

Greg

10:55 - 11:00

Like it's like a child, right? Can I can be so this is so good. I love a red one. I love a green.

Greg

11:00 - 11:09

Yeah, pretty much. Brilliant, brilliant. Bailey, how about you? Is AI our ultimate creative partner or our replacement?

Greg

11:09 - 11:09

What do you think?

Bailey

11:11 - 11:31

So I like this question a lot. I actually read like a few years ago about how Descartes actually wrote about this in 1637. So this question has been around for a lot longer than people think. And especially now with like Chachabuti 5, I think it's like a digital multitool.

Bailey

11:31 - 12:17

I don't think it's quite a partner, but I think that it's really good at getting a general like view of things. Like with a multitool, you can't like farm with a multitool, but what you can do is use it for a variety of general things like a screwdriver or like a knife. and like really, really good and it does too. But then there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't really notice that I'm doing that it like helps me find.

Bailey

12:18 - 12:28

So I don't know if it's quite a partner and I definitely don't think it can replace us, but I do think it's a powerful tool that we can use in a lot of different situations.

Greg

12:29 - 12:36

Thank you, Bailey. Can you, can you give an example with that off the top of your head? And I hate when people say that. So if you can, that's okay.

Greg

12:36 - 12:37

But yeah, sample. Yeah.

Bailey

12:38 - 12:54

Yeah, totally. So with writing, one of my biggest bad habits is that I use multiple tenses by accident. And it's really, really good at noticing and figuring out which tense I'm in and keeping me consistent with that. So that's a good example.

Bailey

12:56 - 13:14

It can help me find new books that are similar to what I'm writing so that I can like study what other people have done. I think it's also, it's not quite good at composing yet, but what it can do is help me find composers in the same kind of genre. So I think it's kind of good for those kind of things.

Greg

13:15 - 13:25

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because you're, you know, music is your background, your profession. So have you found a way to use it in that endeavor yet? Not really.

Bailey

13:25 - 13:49

I think it's really good at teaching. So like I have, uh, I teach lessons for flute and piano and it's really good at like giving me ideas for things I can talk about or like do in lessons. So I think it's pretty good for like helping me teach a little bit better. And it kind of, it knows a lot of the social situations of like, like teacher, student, and it's pretty good at kind of identifying those kinds of issues and stuff.

Greg

13:50 - 13:55

Right. Awesome. Devin, how about you? Is AI our ultimate creative partner?

Greg

13:55 - 13:56

or our replacement.

Devin

13:59 - 14:15

I don't think it's either. I don't think it will replace us, but I do think it will make the room more crowded. I think AI is going to be out there creating. People are going to be using AI to create, and that's going to mean there's more content out there.

Devin

14:16 - 14:42

That doesn't mean there's room for our voice in our particular brand of creativity, but it's just going to be more crowded. As far as my personal use, my favorite use of it as it exists now for generative AI, is leverage. My example is I love cartoons. I've always been obsessed with cartoons, but I can't draw at a professional level to create a cartoon that would show up in the New Yorker, okay?

Devin

14:43 - 15:07

But I can describe to ChatGPT an image that I would like it to create, and it will create a professional quality image for me that goes along with whatever the caption is that makes it hopefully a funny cartoon. So that was really liberating for me. I can finally do something and show people instead of like, oh, look, here's two stick figures. And if I could draw, here's what they would be doing.

Devin

15:07 - 15:28

No, it's like, oh, here's a real decent image. And the other example of leverage is there's so many people out there creating content and written content. who are non-native English speakers but want their content to be able to be released into the English-speaking world. Well, that's a hard barrier.

Devin

15:28 - 15:47

I mean, people that read, you know, like Bailey's short stories, you know, a native English speaker is often very critical, and they're going to read critically. You know, I used to have trouble with Tent, but that's all in the past now. But it's hard. to present something in another language.

Devin

15:47 - 16:03

But ChatGPT can do that. It can take your best attempt at English and tweak it and find those little, as Bailey said, do the editing and say, eh, I would do it like this. That's not new content. That's not cheating.

Devin

16:03 - 16:16

That's taking what you did and making it better. And I love that leverage aspect of it. But I'll end with this. So, when I was in high school, me and a bunch of my friends worked in a shop that made record crates.

Devin

16:18 - 16:39

So, old vinyl albums and they would pack them in crates and that's where you would store your albums. And we assembled those as fast as we could. And the owner one day came in and had bought pneumatic nail guns so that instead of hammering the nails, we could shoot the nails in place and make the crates. Now, that was a great tool.

Devin

16:39 - 17:04

We made those crates a lot faster. But, we were teenage boys, and so we figured out a way to jam the safety on the nail guns and use them as machine guns against each other. So, nail gun wars broke out in the shop and, you know, it was not good. But, and that just goes to show you can take a great tool that has the potential for incredible efficiency and totally weaponize it and create chaos.

Devin

17:04 - 17:07

So, yeah, it really depends on the intent of the user.

Greg

17:08 - 17:17

That's right, man. You know, those habits and stuff. I used to have a habit with indecisiveness, but now I'm not too sure. But there is that.

Greg

17:17 - 17:36

Yeah, the staple guns. I used, my background is in upholstery and we had frame staple guns, probably like the ones that you used, the, you know, yay big. And those hurt when you staple yourself to a trestle. Then, you know, especially when there's no one else there and you can't reach the pliers and you're like, oh, someone comes soon, you know, a couple of hours and they'll be back from that job.

Greg

17:37 - 17:49

and by then they can undo me. So that's true. But Devin, from a legal aspect, you're not suggesting that people tamper with the safety rails on chat GPT, right?

Devin

17:52 - 18:02

No, I'm not. Actually, no, I wouldn't even say that. I think everything should be tampered with. Things should be experimented with.

Devin

18:02 - 18:18

We should figure out what things can do. We should be mindful of the legal. There's great potential for that kind of harm by ignoring the legal, so we have to be mindful of it. but I don't like saying so don't do this or make sure that you keep these guardrails up because that's creativity.

Devin

18:18 - 18:43

Creativity is making a mess and then and bonding the the gold in there that's somewhere in that all that spaghetti you throw against the wall but yeah we do have to be mindful if we're if we're literally stealing from other creatives and that becomes part of our content, then yeah, we need to be aware of that. And that's not cool. But it's a while it's a wild wild west out there right now on the legal landscape.

Greg

18:43 - 18:57

It really is. And you know, some of the most creative things have come from mistakes, right? So people doing something and you know, getting an unintended result, which turned out to be, you know, the best thing since sliced bread. So Alessandra, this is a great conversation.

Greg

18:58 - 18:58

What do you what do you think?

Alessandra

18:59 - 19:34

I have loved this conversation and I guess as for me, there's a course I'm very tempted to take if I had the energy to do it right now. that there was a surefire way that I could use chat GPT as as a power pack to help me do it. But but you know how I love to learn and teach about design thinking. And there is a new a new course that is out there.

Alessandra

19:34 - 20:16

It's already come out of its focus groups, and is is available and starting at the end of this year about generative AI and design thinking. There's so many things that I want to do or build. And yeah, I just need that power pack to get me over the hill so that I don't quit because I didn't have the energy to finish something that's actually worthwhile. So I think Just staying aware, keep reading, keep asking questions, keep trying it out, be willing to do it wrong, be willing to break it.

Alessandra

20:17 - 20:50

Yeah, and it's really fun. I just appreciate this crew of Creative Work Hour coming together to record these episodes because we're helping people and we're helping each other. I mean, we learn from each other on a daily basis because we meet daily. different configurations of us each day, but it's really lovely to see how it comes full circle and that a topic of conversation as we're checking in or checking out of Creative Work Hour will have everything to do with one of the episodes of this podcast.

Alessandra

20:51 - 21:00

So I love that and I love that, hey, Devin's got a new watch and which begs the question to our Greg, what time is it?

Greg

21:01 - 21:14

It's that time again, you've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But what about you? What do you think? Is AI our ultimate creative partner or our replacement?

Greg

21:15 - 21:20

How do you use AI? What does your workflow look like? Do you use AI? Is it a good thing?

Greg

21:20 - 21:32

Is it a bad thing? Visit us at creativeworkhour.com. And if you get value from these episodes, please let us know so that we can continue to create more for you. Have a blessed week and we'll talk to you again.