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Things changed in the years since I ghosted my own website. In some ways my work hummed along as usual: sites needed developing, pamphlets needed printing, search engines pumped smoke signals into the ether. Granted, there had been a pandemic and companies did an about turn to cope, but there remained a basic ecosystem of website/search/social that underpinned most businesses’s online activities.
That is, until AI reared its head. In the advent of generative this and LLM that, it feels like we are speed-running through epochs of advancement. When redesigning my website, I truthfully did not know which of my services were still commercially viable. By the time of launch, many were sunsetted as they had become evidently obsolete.
Everything has changed. Everything feels different. What to make of it all?
The unavoidable truth
In my line of work, AI has sunk its claws into every bloody thing that I do. These days I can’t so much as fart without a glitter icon asking me to integrate! generate! spend! on the latest computer-powered lackey. It’s exhausting, overwhelming, yet inextricably needed for digital professionals. I must harness AI, or else hold up my hands and beckon the comet.
Intertwined with this are the ethical and moral issues, many of which I’m sympathetic to. I don’t need to state them here – you know what they are – but suffice to say a friction has arisen between my need to earn a living and my values. Perhaps this is not so stark for a carpenter, or a dance artist, or a plumber, but if you’re a web developer well, gee, good luck earning a crust without Claude, Copilot or Cursor.
The initial excitement
I’ll admit I was curious (excited, even) when ChatGPT burst on to the scene. To my surprise, I found that I didn’t do as much with it creatively as I might’ve thought. Put it this way: my 15-year-old self would have had a field day with generative AI. I would scarcely have slept for the creative projects, the wacky ideas, the half-baked apps and the crazy frontiers that an in-pocket ‘oracle’ might have unlocked.
In truth, after the initial flurry of experiments (circa Will Smith spaghetti v1.0) I used ChatGPT rather sparingly. Being proficient in Photoshop, the novelty of image editing was lost on me. So too was the instant quest for answers; I’ve always enjoyed sleuthing, and felt rather put off by the monotone conclusiveness of AI SERPs.
Image generation came along, and that felt exciting – for a time. That is, until the implications of copyright, expression, creativity began to dawn on me. Its ubiquity snowballed, and before long AI-generated material turned my curiosity to irritation, then downright distaste.
I see this pushback in everyday life now, as AI promo material is (rightfully or wrongly) shot down by the disgruntled masses. We know it when we see it, and that animosity contributes to my unease. I can’t help but feel that only the noticeable ‘slop’ is being shot down, while those better versed in using it are able to implement AI with impunity.
Where I’ve settled
I have found through my experiments that AI is not a do or a don’t. Rather, it’s a spectrum on which we pin different aspects of our lives. There are areas I’ll use it worry-free, and those I stay the hell away from. This is hardly a groundbreaking position, but it bears repeating in our polarised age. The vocals naysayers of AI will find their position grow awkward once it has infiltrated every part of their lives. Will they choose to research without it? Seek travel advice without it? Shun its medical breakthroughs? As I said, epochs of advancement.
AI for design = so-so
While I design largely through my accrued skills, I will make use of a generative remove tool, a smart stacking of design files, an AI-driven design suggestion – if it contributes to something I can control.
Whereas in a previous life I would painstakingly scrub pixels from an over-enlarged photograph, I am now able to enjoy the same results via neural filters (albeit with some tweaking).
Above: before/after using the Generative Remove tool in Photoshop. Previously this would’ve taken me fifteen minutes. Now? Seconds. This gets my desired result quicker, and I do not feel like I compromised myself creatively.
In many respects this is faster and – I’m loathe to say it – the results are unambiguously better. I’d love to say they’re not, but I can’t deny the evidence of my eyes. When it comes to the grunt work, it really works.
So when it comes to design, I’m so-so. I like to control the bigger picture, but don’t mind unleashing AI on minor fixes. That’s partially because of the state of progress, but also because AI-driven design flies too close to self-expression (see below). I feel easier presenting something to a client with “look what I did” than “look what just happened”.
The same cannot be said for web development. When it comes to dev and coding, AI has given me a shot in the arm that I’m helpless to go without.
AI for development = yes please
I spent years accruing hotkeys and snippets in order to streamline my coding. I loaded shortcuts into VS Code, iterating after each project to ensure that the next would be coded faster, more efficiently, with fewer repetitions. Now these shortcuts are redundant as Claude and Copilot hurtle ahead of me. Coding nowadays is like working alongside a psychic. Half the time it knows what I am about to write and, when it doesn’t, I give it a little nudge.
I sleep easy using AI to code. For one, I feel like it achieves things that I myself know how to do. Despite my years stressing over bugs and broken loops, the toil has amounted to quite a lot of experience. In this respect, AI is an addition to my talents and not a false veneer for things that I cannot do.
AI for expression = no thank you
I draw the line at what I describe as expression: the written word, the visual ideas, the geysers of creativity that flow from brain to hand. These things must, for my own sanity, be composed from mine own, imperfect self. It is as much a moral issue as it is one of self-preservation. If I am unable (or unwilling) to express myself the way I am, I’m snubbing the very essence of me.
No to writing
I can’t use AI to write these blog posts. I have tried, but there is a dark uncanniness to the results that comes out of it. It might look okay, it might read perfectly well, and I could mould it so that nobody would know it’s AI. And yet I could not shake the feeling that it isn’t mine. I suppose it’s like listening to a recording of yourself, and finding the audio altered to say something you did not.
Is this a productive drawback? Massively. Those that write with AI do so at such alarming speeds they can populate a website in an afternoon*. And yet, is there not something tragic about content that was not thought out, slapped on a website that was not considered, only to be consumed by no-one? What a waste.
*Beware of doing this yourselves; your customers can spot it a mile off. As I tell my clients: why should they read it if you didn’t bother to write it?
No to from-scratch visuals
In the visual arts, my journey has been more complicated. While I can confidently compose sentences, the same cannot be said of my command of the canvas. I can draw but only so well, and I’ll admit the power to illustrate my wildest dreams is a tempting one.
Nonetheless, generating an image from scratch is not for me. Maybe occasionally a project will call on me to do it, and I’ll do so with the skills to be able to edit the result. But image generation is not something I’m into for personal use. In fact, my discomfort with generative images has, for a top-secret project I’m working on, led to both a flourishing collaboration and my own uptake in illustration. Those would not have been possible had I delegated the tasks to ChatGPT.
I feel that everybody will encounter such an impasse; a fork in the road where they decide for themselves which aspects of themselves to entrust to AI, and which should remain human – bumps and all.
But why not coding?
Why don’t I include code in the camp of expression? For me, coding is the means to an end. I appreciate that’s not the same for everyone, and there are those who opine for programming far more passionately than I do. But if I were to be totally honest, my enthusiasm in this department is the result, not the machinations behind it.
Where next?
My position on AI may change as I have no idea where things will go. Something I keep telling my clients is that the way we are headed, I will not (and could not) retire as a web developer. Nor a graphic artist, nor a copywriter, SEO or frankly anything I currently get paid for. I’ve thirty years to go and…something…must fill that void.
Is this what I signed up for? Absolutely not. Will I take it in my stride? Certainly. I plow on now, learning faster and alacrity.
