The Creativity Police

Years ago, Corey Smith sang “F**k The Popo”. And I would have to echo that sentiment today, as we think about…the Creativity Police.

I wasn’t aware we’d funded the department. I don’t remember voting on it. I haven’t seen the little cars around town, and to my knowledge nobody has issued uniforms.

But they’re out there.

And brother, they are busy.

Their job, as best I can determine, is to examine everything anybody creates and determine whether the creator created it in the correct manner.

Not whether it’s good.

That’s secondary.

They want to know how you made it. Did you write every word yourself? Did you use Grammarly? Did you Google anything? Did you use AI?

Aha.

We got you now, Hemingway. Turn around and put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest for First Degree Artificial Assistance.

I see this increasingly among writers, musicians, artists, designers, photographers, and just about anybody else foolish enough to make something and show it to the public.

You finish a book. You release a song. You create a piece of artwork.

And before anybody bothers asking whether it’s any good, somebody wants to know whether you used AI.

Sometimes they don’t even ask. They inform you.

“This is AI.”

Well, thank goodness you got here, Detective.

We’d have never cracked the case without you.

I’m not entirely sure when artists agreed that we owed the general public an itemized accounting of our creative process. Because artists use tools.

We’ve always used tools.

Digital photography wasn’t “real” photography. 

Synthesizers weren’t “real” instruments. 

Photoshop wasn’t “real” art. 

E-books weren’t “real” books.

Auto-Tune wasn’t “real” singing.

And now AI isn’t “real” creativity.

Technology has been wandering into art since somebody figured out that charcoal made a pretty good line on a cave wall. And every time the tools change, somebody decides civilization is about six weeks from collapse.

Now, let me be clear…there are legitimate questions surrounding AI.

Copyright matters. Ownership matters. Consent matters. Passing somebody else’s work off as your own matters. The livelihoods of working artists matter.

Those are conversations worth having.

But screaming “AI!” underneath somebody’s book cover because a shadow looks funny isn’t a conversation.

It’s heckling.

And there’s a mighty big stretch of highway between pushing a button and saying make me a novel and a working writer using technology somewhere in the creative process.

Maybe I use it to brainstorm.

Maybe a musician uses it to experiment with an arrangement.

Maybe an artist uses it to explore a composition.

Creative people already struggle to create. We don’t need any help being insecure.

Every writer has stared at a blank page.

Every musician has wondered whether the song is any good.

Every artist has looked at something half-finished and considered throwing it away.

We already have a critic. He lives in our head. And he’s mean.

The last thing creative people need is another reason to stop.

Because the opposite of creativity isn’t AI…it’s silence.

A blank page.

An unopened guitar case.

An unpainted canvas.

A story never written.

A song never played.

An idea somebody carried around for twenty years and finally buried because someone convinced them there was a “correct” way to be creative…and they weren’t doing it.

That troubles me far more than artificial intelligence ever could.

So to my fellow writers, musicians, painters, photographers, filmmakers, woodworkers, designers, dreamers, tinkerers, and assorted creative troublemakers:

You do you.

Use a fountain pen.

Use a laptop.

Use a 1957 Martin.

Use GarageBand.

Use Photoshop.

Use ChatGPT.

Use three cups of coffee and a yellow legal pad.

Just make something.

Be ethical. Respect other creators. Don’t steal. Don’t lie about what you’ve done when it matters.

But don’t surrender your creative life to strangers who have appointed themselves guardians of a gate nobody asked them to guard.

The world doesn’t need fewer people creating.

It needs more.

So write the story, paint the picture, play the song, make the thing.

And damn the critics.

As for the Creativity Police? They can write me a ticket. 

I’ll frame it.