Last year, I shared a post where I showed how I was using Co-pilot to prototype book covers that would serve as inspiration and reference for my writing.
Since doing that, I discovered my mistake.
Why? Well, I stopped doing that thing I really enjoy in the early development of projects: sketching out scenes and characters, to inspire and enrich.
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As a kid, I loved to idle away time doodling and drawing. I have notebooks full of that stuff from the age of eight until now. As a kid, in the absence of capable writing skills, I drew poster art for movies I wanted to write and direct. I have many colourful memories of myself as a boy, sitting in a sports hall in Holmes Chapel Leisure Centre, drawing A4 posters of art while my mum was doing her aerobics classes. Good, inspiring times, listening to 80s pop whilst drawing the next 80s blockbuster movie!
As an adult, I drew covers for The Secret War and Sandcastles on the Moon because they also inspired me, but in a different way; they acted as an incentive to finish, a milestone to reach out for. (And they were helpful when the publisher asked for recommendations for book covers later on, but more of that in a future post.)
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But you know what else I've discovered? AI isn't a substitute for my sketches at all, because it only provides a facsimile of what I want, a facsimile that I have to iterate over and over to get even close to my vision.
Co-pilot couldn't replicate my imagination. It could not translate my thoughts into a picture.
Yeah, you can argue that when I sketch, that translation is limited by my own skills (I have an eye, but I'm no genius!), and time (shouldn't I be spending this time writing words on a page, not drawing?). That doesn't mean it's any worse than AI, or any less of an investment than the writing. Sometimes, obvious shortcuts are not the best. Just ask the wolf in Red Riding Hood. Sure, he gets there first, but what if he hadn't? He might have been around to eat another day!
My own work is raw. I'm a sketcher, not a painter. I'm not an artist in the classical sense, and I don't think I can turn professional. For example, this is the sketch I drew a couple of weeks ago, for a current project:
It's rough, it's pencil, and it's raw. But it's me.
I also generated this in Co-pilot:
It's more finished, skilled and refined.
But it's not me. And it doesn't inspire because of that.
The pencil sketch above is a first draft, not intended to be the final result (even if there is one, because I'm not Jean Cocteau, or Clive Barker, folks - I'm not that skilled!). But it serves as an important reference for me, a reminder of what my stories are about (and they are about me, what inspires, what I hope for, what I fear). What's important is that AI will never truly understand that, even though it's trying its best to. It doesn't have emotional intelligence; it just copies what it thinks are emotions. It's a fraud, at best.
So it can't inspire.
What's also important is that I still get a kick out of drawing, even if I'm not the most skilful. My mistake is that inspiration can come from many corners, be they natural, supernatural or human.
They don't come from algorithms or formulas.
That's not Art.
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