Written by: Akshika Jangid
A friend of mine texted, “I bumped into Shahrukh Khan.”
In shocking disbelief, I reacted with, “Really.”
She was like, “Well, sort of.”
Here’s the real truth
Of course, she hadn’t met him in person. She was playing with Google’s Gemini new nano Banana feature with an AI update that helps you generate hyper-realistic images with just a prompt.
She was trying to explain to me that sometimes if we are just sitting in our comfort spaces, we have access to contemporary digital tools that allow us to place ourselves in imagined settings, stories or experiences. Such technologies blur the lines between imagination and reality, offering creative possibilities that were once inaccessible due to constraints of budget, space, or opportunity.
And that’s the power of AI.
So from waiting for an opportunity to meet her celebrity crush, she got her wish fulfilled somehow, which eventually made her realise that creativity today has no border, budget and no excuses.
This bring me to a real pondering question,
Is human creativity still relevant or can go hand in hand with Artificial Intelligence?
Well, I believe that it is utmost important and relevant.
Andreas Pfeiffer, president of Pfeiffer Consulting in a recent study reminds us that creativity isn’t only about what you make, but why you make it. Whether it’s a marketer shaping a campaign, a designer crafting visuals, or a writer weaving a story, the real spark lies in the intention behind the work. That purpose—the heartbeat of creativity—is something no machine can truly imitate.
You may ask, what exactly do I mean by creativity? 
I am referring to creativity as an expression of human emotion which is personal and not just an innovation. While AI relies on pure scientific data and not the personal experiences that we bring in, human creativity emerges from lived experiences and genuine feelings. We can explain or elaborate any experience or scene that we want AI to capture as uniquely as possible but it is impossible that AI can bring originality to the real moments that we feel. AI can definitely mimic or remix our own set of ideas but at the end it is wired through a set of patterns, prompts and data that is given by us, it still doesn’t originate ideas. Regardless, human creativity is indeed an important part of the AI generation process. The impact it has on the creative world is huge and we can only expect more and more from it in the coming years. Yet, as history shows, the debate over AI’s role in creativity is not new. Even as early as the 1970s, experiments were underway to explore how far machines could step into traditionally human domains of art and imagination.
Evolution of Machine Made Art
A striking example is AARON, an AI artist created in the 1960s by Harold Cohen. Over time, AARON’s work evolved from Cubist-like abstractions to rich, expressionistic landscapes. These works are undeniably captivating, yet once one learns they are machine-made, an unsettling question arises: has art lost its uniquely human essence, replaced instead by algorithmic strokes? As AARON challenges our traditional notions of authorship and expression, we are compelled to reflect—does the soul of art reside in its human creator, or can machines truly generate beauty that feels equally profound? A similar tension appeared in music – Davis Cope’s “Musical Intelligence” project revealed that AI simply picked different known musical patterns from famous musicians. Together, these examples show how AI’s creative outputs can dazzle the senses but also remind us of what remains absent: the inner intention that defines human creativity.
In today’s times, we now have deep learning methods or generative adversarial networks that help us in transforming creativity. These technologies act like magic brushes, making it easier for everyday creators to craft stunning, high-quality images without needing years of training. Imagine a hobbyist artist suddenly able to create lifelike 3D worlds or immersive designs using virtual reality experiences that once required specialized skills. This new ease is fueling an explosion of original, game-changing ideas — what experts now call disruptive thinking — where creative professionals are breaking boundaries and exploring fresh, bold directions they couldn’t before.
Artificial Intelligence is an interplay between man and a machine and without the human element, creative outputs could not be generated. Like most illustrators, I have been horrified by the profusion of products put out by these generative AI companies. When we talk about image generators like Midjourney, DALLE etc, I want to be really specific as per what we are talking about. We are referring to companies that are funded by tens of millions of dollars by some of the most malignant actors in Silicon Valley and scrape the internet for billions of images; many of them are copyrighted. These aren’t just illustrations or professional pictures, they are private medical images and some of these are literal pictures of your kids. They use them without consent, without any compensation to train their generators. The only reason that these image generators are good is because it was trained on billions of billions of stolen images. This might seem bad enough that these huge corporations with so much money are taking images from real working artists. But the thing that’s even worse is that the purpose of these products is to de-skill, dis-empower and to ultimately replace working artists. The products are good enough to spit out a somewhat soulless facsimile of the work of any artist that they are trained on. There’s a quote that reminds me as I write this and I quote, “Generative AI Art is vampirical feasting on past generations of artwork even as it sucks the lifeblood of living artists.”
Is AI and Human creativity better together?
AI may help in enhancing the work of the art but at the core of it, it is the human creativity that makes it all worth it as it helps connect to a larger audience. It’s not true that AI is really replacing human creatives and taking away the jobs of the artists. Human creativity and AI aren’t rivals—they’re better when they work as partners. At its best, what AI offers is speed, precision, and scale, but what humans bring is heart, purpose, and resonance.
Think of filmmakers experimenting with AI-generated storyboards: the algorithms quickly sketch rough drafts, so directors can spend their energy shaping powerful narratives that move audiences. Even the fashion designers are using AI to explore infinite design variations, yet the final collection still needs a human sense of culture, trends, and storytelling to hit the runway. In music, producers are turning to AI for beat-making or soundscapes, but the emotional pull of a song still comes from the human voice and lyrics that reflect lived experiences.
AI is indeed used as the most powerful enabler of human freedom of expression. By putting creative AI tools in the hands of anyone who seeks to use them, it has the potential to truly democratize the art-making process. To oppose this is not only to resist innovation—it is, in many ways, to stand against the very spirit of art and the people it is meant to empower.
The synergy is strongest when AI takes on the repetitive or mechanical aspects—whether that’s editing hundreds of photo variations, drafting multiple copy options for a campaign, or generating preliminary sketches. This frees creative teams to focus on what no algorithm can provide: originality, intuition, and human emotion.
The magic lies in blending both—the tireless efficiency of AI and the irreplaceable spark of human imagination. When used together, it can push creative industries into exciting new territories without losing the human essence that makes art truly meaningful.
