The debate surrounding AI in the creative industries will never stop. A year ago, the dominant mood was anxiety. The fear that tools trained on the work of others will emerge in search of work, identity, and the very idea of what it means to make something. Twelve months have passed and the situation has become considerably more complicated.
That doesn’t mean the anxiety has gone away. it’s not. But something else joined it. Whether people want it or not, this technology is now woven into the fabric of everyday creative life, not to mention everyday creative life.
This change was evident at this year’s OFFF Barcelona. As we outlined in our report, the key conversation was less about whether AI was coming and more about how to respond to it now that it was here.
Creative Boom has always aimed to reflect the community as a whole, rather than championing any particular position. In this light, ignoring the arrival of AI is like ignoring home computers in the 1990s or saying Photoshop wasn’t reshaping the industry in the 2000s. It’s possible, but not particularly honest.
So we asked members of our private community, The Studio, directly. Have your views changed over the past year? Their answers suggest the community is thinking more seriously about this issue than the loudest voices on either side would suggest.
“I don’t want to be stripped of my wealth for the sake of wealth.”
For some, this past year has only reinforced what they already believed, and there’s no shame in that. For example, studio member Todd Walker remains steadfast. “Nothing has changed as to why he’s a non-starter,” he says. “It’s still built on stolen art. It’s still an environmental disaster. It’s still lining the pockets of people who are trying to destroy society. It’s still dismantling technology and destroying people’s lives.”
Brand voice copywriter Jonathan Wilcock offers a similarly uncompromising statement of dissent. “I’m even more against using it for thinking, writing, and editing now,” he says. He recalled a passage from a recent conference talk that perfectly summed up his thinking. “I don’t want to be stripped of my wealth for the sake of wealth.”
Illustrator and author Juliana Salcedo has also changed her views on the opposition, but she hasn’t changed her mind. “I no longer think of this as a personal battle,” she explains. “I now see this as an adaptation that all parties affected by this massive copyright theft, especially policymakers, have to work on, because these companies funnel all the profits from other companies. They’ve done it in the past. Look at what they’ve done to the once-powerful legacy media.”
try it and think you want it
However, not everyone is completely distancing themselves from AI. Some people have mastered the tools at their own pace in real commercial work and come back with a clear-eyed assessment of where they currently fall short.
Photo retoucher and creative artwork Sandrine Bascourt recently used generative AI tools like Gemini 3 and Flux Kontext in Photoshop on a high-stakes portrait retouching job for a major brand. For her, the experience was beneficial.
“I ended up using up all my credits – 4,000 credits for a set of 10 images. There was so much trial and error that I ended up doing most of it by hand,” she recalls. “We had to do a lot of work on things that were good enough. We lost too much time waiting for the engine to render the prompts. Simply put, this stuff is not production-ready, at least not for critical work.”
However, she distinguishes between generative AI and the built-in AI tools that have been part of Photoshop for years. “AI has been in Photoshop for months now, with content-aware fills and scaling, neural filters, subject selection, and more. Those are great things. But what about GenAI as we know it now? It can’t be used in final images.”
Graphic designer Josh Welsh isn’t a fan of Adobe’s current direction either. “AI would be more accepted if Adobe hadn’t been so predatory and forced it on us in every possible way,” he argues. “Creators want to learn and grow, and Adobe is getting it all wrong.”
Ultimately, he believes AI has natural limits. “Artificial intelligence will never replace the spark of our creativity. Artificial intelligence will never produce unique works. It will copy and paste everything it is told until people get tired of it. I hope that in an era where AI becomes more involved, people will seek out human-made designs, things that are unique, thoughtful, and made with care and patience.”
Digital and branding designer Amy Ray shares a similar view. “I feel like designers are being bombarded with information that this is the best ever, this is better than ever,” she says. “But when you use it to design something specific, it becomes like a trainee who doesn’t really listen to you and acts on its own.”
Where it’s actually useful
But for others, the experience was more positive. Perhaps it’s because we’re using AI for clearly demarcated tasks, rather than asking it to think for us.
Brand designer Gavin Brophy, for example, has found a realistic balance. “I use AI every day primarily because I know my own limitations,” he explains. “Mundane, task-heavy tasks are something I’m not good at, but the AI takes care of them all the way through, allowing me to stay focused on the parts that actually matter. The visual generation aspect is interesting, but it’s still just a concept. You still have to direct it. The output is only as good as the thought you put into it.”
Designer and art director Sara Koval considers herself an aficionado, although not an uncritical one. “Technology companies are constantly competing to be the best, making it costly and difficult to keep up,” she complains. “We often end up paying for multiple app subscriptions just to test tools, learn them properly, and understand where they fit, only to quickly have to replace them with newer, better tools, which makes upskilling seem harder than it needs to be.”
Sarah also has a clear eye for broader implications. “I enjoy AI, but I’m also scared to see the downside,” she says. “From fake videos just to get more views for your content, to the ability to create nudes of children using just regular photos and distribute them in schools. Basically, everything is growing and changing rapidly.”
definitional problems
Creative director Paul Leon has been clear about generative AI in a creative context, and his studio has tested it and decided firmly against it, but that doesn’t mean he’s against AI in general. “Are we against machine learning to complement our toolset, for example in image editing, to cut things out precisely and speed up tedious tasks?” he asks. “No. Is it a good thing that machine learning can contribute to the speed and accuracy of cancer diagnosis? Absolutely, no problem.”
However, he is highly skeptical of the current investment narrative. “I feel like there is a gap between what machine learning can actually do and what the tech fraternity is saying to increase investment,” he argues. “Some people are getting very rich.”
Edmund Keefe, a lecturer in product design engineering at MMU, shares that concern. “My only concern with AI is that it is owned by a small number of people,” he says. “This is a new cash stream for a very small group of tech friends. AI systems themselves are very good management tools, some of which I use every day.”
One of the problems here is with the definition. Designer and artist Matthew Gallagher says: “When you talk to people about AI, it seems like a lot of them are actually talking about automation. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, but they’re also different.” He points to the CARES framework, which was developed for the ethical use of AI in health care, and argues that if something similar had been adopted for genetic AI from the beginning, “we wouldn’t have had intellectual property violations and we wouldn’t have an impending ecological disaster.”
What emerges from all this is not a pretty conclusion, but perhaps a more honest one. The community is weighing technology they didn’t ask for, on a schedule they didn’t choose. The conversation hasn’t been resolved, but it’s certainly deepened. If you would like to join us and share your opinion, you are most welcome. Find out more about The Studio by clicking the link below.
