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Are Artists Being Replaced by AI?
Published October 28, 2022 · 148 views on YouTube
Is AI replacing artists?
No. In this interview, the guest argues that new creative tools have historically expanded the market rather than shrunk it — expanding opportunities for income streams and creative approaches instead of putting people out of work. The same pattern held for AI content writing: it didn’t replace writers, it enabled them to expand output and produce more in less time.
How does AI act as a creative enabler rather than a replacement?
The interview frames AI as “the evolution of the paintbrush.” One example given is an artist living with Bell’s palsy who loses control of his hands — AI let him “speak what’s in my imagination” and turn it into visuals he couldn’t otherwise produce by hand. Another example is a blogger who speaks their posts aloud rather than typing them, with AI tools like Jasper turning that speech into finished content. Copywriters interviewed at the same event described their AI tool as “my best assistant,” “my brainstorming buddy,” and “my sidekick” — used mainly for generating creative hooks and directions to test, rather than replacing the writing itself.
What tips does the interview give for people just getting started with AI tools?
- Be patient with yourself — new technology like AI can feel daunting at first, but getting comfortable with it takes time.
- Expect it to take practice, the way learning any instrument does.
- If you’ve never directed an assistant or outsourced work before, expect a learning curve in giving clear directions.
- Remember that better input produces better output — the tool depends on how well you communicate what you want.
How do you give AI tools better instructions?
The interview uses a “training the puppy” analogy: the AI already knows commands like “sit” and “stay,” but getting the result you want depends on how well you give those commands, not just whether the tool is capable. Two concrete examples are given. First, a rewrite command: “Hey Jasper, read the above and rewrite in the tone of voice of Jerry Seinfeld,” which has the tool read prior content and rewrite it in that style. Second, a personalization example for an outbound email: using a winning email structure with placeholders, then instructing “Hey Jasper, write an email like the above for Darby Rollins, the season is autumn in Austin, Texas” — producing a uniquely rewritten version rather than a verbatim copy.
Full video transcript
So excited whenever that tool drops, and people just got started producing all kinds of crazy pictures all over the place. And one of the questions that came up from that was: okay, are artists just getting pushed out of the picture now? Which I don’t think is the case. What are some use cases that you’re seeing from people in the business and content creation world specifically — because obviously my take is that this art tool is still just going to help catalyze your creativity and empower artists to create even cooler things. But from a business perspective — I’m a content marketer, I’m creating stuff for a website, for a blog, to sell products, to promote my own products — what are some ways that you’re seeing the community use this right now, and also what are some potential use cases as the tool improves?
Yeah, I’ll hit some of the use cases which are exciting. With all inventions there are some people that live in a state of fear where they’re like, “oh my gosh, am I going to be replaced and out of a job?” And it’s simply not the case. Look at the time horizon — you find that when a new invention or style of creativity emerges, it actually expands the market and expands the opportunities for more income streams, for more creative uses, and for how you approach a creative project, and also allows more bandwidth — being able to scale up and do more. We’ve never been in the camp that AI is here to replace anyone. As we’ve seen over the last year with AI content writing, it’s not replacing people — it’s actually enabling them to expand and scale output and to do it in less time.
So if you’re a bootstrap team that’s trying to crank out content and be omnipresent across all your social channels, before you’d literally be waking up early and going to bed late trying to create content. Now you’re able to actually get home early to go pick up your kids, or not spend your weekends doing a Sunday content catalog. What’s awesome is when you have a great tool, it’s here to help efficiency and scale. I’ve found, after interviewing a lot of copywriters — even here at the summit at the Copy and Conversion Summit — met so many content writers and copywriters, and they’re like, “this is my best assistant, they’re my brainstorming buddy, they’re my sidekick.”
And when I think about art, it’s the evolution of the paintbrush. One artist I was talking with — he’s in the family, he has Bell’s palsy — and art is actually a really great enabler for him, but when he sort of loses control of his hands and starts fidgeting, when I was showing him art it was like, “oh my gosh, I can actually speak what’s in my imagination and start to craft, paint in real life.” Similarly, there’s a famous blogger who speaks their blogs, and this is the kind of thing Jasper can help enable. So these are some use cases, and also enablement for the creative process, for scale, and for efficiency. Brainstorming tends to be the top use case — it’s here to help inspire your ideas. If you’re like, “I need eight creative hooks to test,” or even just to inspire your own ideas so you can figure out which direction you want to go with — this is what we’re really finding: our stride is in the marketing community, where they’re using AI, specifically Jasper, to enable their creative workflow.
Yeah, and I think the enablement is such a cool thing — the Jasper Dental helps so many people, myself included, and so many people in this community. For someone who’s just exploring the ideas of AI, maybe hasn’t been a part of the Jasper community, just getting a taste of everything for the first time at the summit — what are a few pointers, general tips you’d give someone who’s just starting out? Assume they’re probably using AI for business marketing of some sort, but maybe some key tips and tricks for people just getting started to get on the right path with this tool.
Yeah, I think first is: be patient with yourself, and know that new technology like artificial intelligence might sound daunting when you get in and you’re like, “there’s this thing in here that can consume information and create new outputs — how am I going to work with this, am I behind the times?” And no, you’re on the cutting edge of the future, and you’re right along with us, and we’re making it — we’re going to do our best to make it easy for everybody to get the result they intend. Second is: it takes practice, learning it’s an instrument. And if you’ve never hired before, if you’re a solopreneur, or if you’re not even in business all the time and it’s more of a side hustle, and you’ve never worked with giving directions to someone, hiring your first assistant takes patience on yourself.
What we’re finding is AI is a puppy, and you’re wanting to take the puppy to training. What you’ll find out is that training is mostly about training the owner, not the puppy. So yes, we are teaching Jasper how to write great copy, and that’s our job — that’s not your job. Your job is to learn to train the puppy now that you have it, to get the result you want. The commands — sit, stay, lay down, etc. — right now, what does that mean for you? How do you structure a really good command, a good direction for your assistant? Outsourcing things like that requires good input — the better the input, the better the output. If you don’t know how to train your dog, then even if it knows all the commands, if you don’t know how to say those commands to get the result you’re thinking of — or even inspired — I didn’t know dogs could do this, go get me a beer out of the fridge. There are dogs that can do that, if only you knew they could.
So it is our job — and obviously what you guys do too — is training the humans that use the AI on how to use the AI. For example, did you know that you could say, “hey Jasper, read the above and rewrite in the tone of voice of Jerry Seinfeld,” and it understands that command? So it’s read Jerry Seinfeld stuff, and it can read the above to then produce a rewritten result. You can also have — let’s say you have a structure and you have placeholders. For example, you’re doing an outbound email and you have a winning formula, but you want to personalize it for each person you’re sending to — so you say a placeholder for a name, the season, maybe market conditions or their company name. You can say, “hey Jasper, write an email like the above for Darby Rollins, the season is autumn in Austin, Texas,” and then it’ll rewrite the email with that structure. It won’t be exact, it won’t even be verbatim the same, because it’s not doing ad-libs — it will rewrite it uniquely, but with that as a good behavior.