To AI or not to AI

I was looking to design an icon for this site last night and thought I would try out Microsoft Co-Pilot to see what it could produce for fun. It ended up producing the logo you should see in your browser. To be honest I wasn’t expecting anything good but there it is. I did have to drop it into Microsoft Designer to refine the cropping and transparency a little, however.

I know there is a discussion going on regarding AI generation and how it is being trained on others work. I can see two arguments for this:

For Generative AI

For simple tasks such as I what I used it for I do not see the issue. Also, when we create as humans do we not at least subconsciously take inspiration for what we have seen before? I do believe AI should cite its “inspiration” origins where possible though. If it is too close to the original, then the AI should disregard it. However, I do not know how you would define that from a technical perspective. Also, it could be subjective.

Against Generative AI

There are many skilled and talented people out there that could potentially find themselves out of work by Generative AI. For instance, I could have found and paid someone to produce the logo for this site.

Conclusion

I am leaning more Generative AI as being a great tool to be used alongside the imagination and creativity of talented people. It does not necessarily have to be seen as taking things away but more as another tool being added to a creator’s toolset.

I’m open to changing my mind and discussing this. What is for sure though, Generative AI is not going anywhere and is only going to become more ubiquitous.