Copy Cat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU

Was it plagiarism?

In the seventh grade, my mother and I were clothes shopping. We were approaching spring, and I spotted a pink and white windowpane jumper that I loved. I had a pink turtleneck that I could wear underneath it. After I tried it on, I wanted it and pleaded with my mother. Being pragmatic, she never made a purchase based solely on emotion, so after examining the stitching, the seams inside and out, and the fabric content, which could be laundered at home, it passed the test.  One of my mother’s creative gifts was sewing, and she knew how it should be done. I wore it on Monday. The following week, another girl at school wore the same jumper. I didn’t like it. I felt that my style had been robbed.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this memory came up when a friend recently reminded me that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

By nature, I am a right-brainer, I have imagination, holistic thinking, and intuition and love the arts, rhythm, nonverbal cues, feeling, visualizations, and daydreaming.

But I also have a strong sense of logic, know facts and love language.

My wix website that I’ve never capitalized on and have used as a creative outlet, is now pushing it’s way into my inner world and I dislike it.  It’s generating posts based on my latest and adding filler without saying much of anything.  This is not creative; this is jibberish.

I sense this is the start of a major problem.  Thanks to various AI tools that transform verbal prompts into creative visuals, this would be fine for someone that either doesn’t want to think for themselves and or can’t. But it’s not for me.

It’s intrusive.  It assumes I’ll be saying the same thing all of the time. And that’s not original, it's boring. I see some serious pitfalls in relying on AI for creativity instead of learning to write, draw or paint, learning an instrument to make music instead of AI-created songs, and learning to love art the old-fashioned way through art education.

AI’s ability to generate ideas, images, music, and text at lightning speed is revolutionary. For creative professionals, AI can serve as a powerful accelerator, generating hundreds of design concepts or musical ideas in the time it would take a human to create just a few. This productivity boost is undeniably attractive in industries where deadlines are tight and competition is fierce.

As with any tool, the real question is not what AI can do but what it might replace or diminish.

History teaches us that skills not exercised tend to fade. Just as calculators have dulled our mental arithmetic and spell-checkers our spelling, generative AI threatens to atrophy our creative muscles if we let it do the heavy lifting. When writers, artists, and musicians become dependent on AI for inspiration and execution, their ability to innovate may wane. Over time, this could lead to a generation of creators more adept at prompt engineering than original thoughts.

Moreover, as AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, there is a risk that audiences- and even creators themselves—will come to accept mediocrity as the norm. The unique spark of human creativity risks being drowned in a flood of algorithm-generated music, art, and literature, leading to a dull world of uniformity.

Creativity is not just about producing something new; it is also about the personal journey of discovery, the thrill of invention, and the satisfaction of recognition. Throughout history, innovators have been driven by the desire for status, self-actualization, and the hope of leaving a lasting mark. If AI can instantly replicate or surpass human output, what incentive remains for the next Mozart, Picasso, or Curie to push the boundaries?

The creative spirit is one of humanity’s greatest assets, the engine of progress and the bedrock of culture. Suppose we allow AI to erode that spirit through over-reliance and complacency. In that case, we risk not just the loss of individual talents but also a collective decline in our capacity to imagine, invent, and inspire. The challenge before us is to harness AI’s power without sacrificing the irreplaceable value of human creativity. The future depends on our ability to strike that balance.