Creativity, AI, Disability and Me

This year I made the conscious decision to move my focus away from the results and (vanity) metrics that had become so very disheartening. They were driving me away from poetry and creativity in general. I didn’t want to feel like I was screaming pointlessly into the void. Screaming at the void with intention and purpose would have felt like an improvement on what I was doing.

The TLDR is that taking the time to step back and reconnect with, both why I started writing poetry, and then sharing it, led to me deciding to launch my own website as a place to put my creative endeavours. A place that I could build out, (or not,) under my creative control. I am taking the advice of Rick Rubin and creating for myself; I am not looking to see if there is a lane for me to follow; I am creating my own.

Hopefully, I don’t sound too grandiose, because I am doing this all for the fun of doing. I managed to fall in love with the process; something I had completely lost before in my metrics obsession. I don’t remember who I am stealing this off, but my mantra became, “without labour, there is no love”. Creativity is, for me, a labour of love. As with previous endeavours where I have enjoyed success, loving the process is purpose enough.

While learning to get back to loving the creative process one big hurdle, aside from being seduced by productivity metrics, has been understanding how disability and chronic illness affect me. I don’t have the energy or capacity to blunt force myself through whatever it is I am trying to do. I simply can’t work more, spend more time, learn more things. It worked for a while, but in my forties that all came crashing down and now I have less capacity. If you read my blog, then you are aware I bash my head against this obstacle quite often. I don’t want to admit that I am not capable of being superman anymore, even if being superman is what put me here in the first place.

Having a disability has meant I have had to learn to accept help, and I have had to learn to use tools and accommodations. I still resist walking with a stick, and I inevitably regret that leaving it behind. Even if my nice black stick doesn’t stand out, it is cumbersome and likes to fall on the floor every time I sit down. They all do that, its very annoying.

It is the realm of capability where I was first drawn by the potential of AI. Its allure was much the same as spell and grammar checkers offered for my dyslexia. At first, I used AI to generate pictures for my blogs. I used OpenArt, it wasn’t long until I found it to be sloppy and uncontrollable with too many anomalies and artifacts. I abandoned it just as I discovered the copyright and stealing of the companies in training their AI. I felt lucky that I was able not be part of that problem. At the same time, I was using AI to suggest ways to write captions for SEO. I wanted to be seen, to connect, and I have always struggled to understand how to successfully SEO without looking like some bland generic sales slop machine.

I ended my AI engagement when the metrics for AI assisted, and non-AI proved to be comparable, if not worse for AI. What is the point of taking the time to best put the suggestions in my own voice if it made no difference. There is no way I am copy pasting AI generated text for my original work. Just no. I am happy to use AI for early research, stuff that points a direction, gives a start, but I am really after the source material. I have found it good to help me hit the ground running when I want to learn something, like Wikipedia. However, it is too bland, generic, vague and prone to hallucinations to use on its own.

I also still have very mixed feelings about how the models have been trained, the impact of data centres and the obvious misuse of the LLM prediction engine models that we have. Its not Artificial Intelligence, whatever the tech bros tell me. It’s a prediction engine based on models and training data. Good when the next thing is very predictable, terrible at details. I still use a spell and grammar checker, and I don’t accept their suggestions carte-blanche either, a spiel chocker is fallible.

I am conflicted. This conflict has been magnified of late because I decided to dip my toe back into the field of generative AI when looking for different ways to present my poems to the world. Something a little innovative maybe. Generative AI has offered an avenue for me to overcome the fact that I am not going to ever be able to illustrate and produce the videos that I have made with generative AI. In a nutshell my stroke took away the fine motor control for drawing as well as giving me some speech difficulties. What I can do is generate the ideas for prompts, I can write original material, and I can work with the voiceover to generate reasonable accurate readings of my own words. I am working on my own spoken word too, but that will take a while.

Part of me wants to hate on AI for all the companies are doing, but I am also happy with what I have managed to make with the tools, and how my disabilities haven’t prevented me from experimenting with this medium. In the future, an illustrator would be amazing, my own voice is the goal, but until then my creativity can push the tools and be as innovative as it can. But I wonder, is this okay, am I betraying creativity somehow?

The one thing I want to keep being is authentic, I want the tools to be just that, tools. I want my voice, my vision and ideas to be the foundation of everything that carries my name. My question is, does using generative AI take that away. It is a debate, and AI is never writing for me, it is never picking a visual that I don’t want, and the voice over will use my words. I want the tools to be tools only.

So, until next week, keep on keeping on. Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments and do all the like and subscribe things if you would like to see more of my creative content. (lesliepoet.com)