How A.I. Boosted My Creativity

I think everyone, even non-creatives, can relate to a time when they have been mentally blocked. You’re working on a task, or are asked to start a task from scratch, and you run into a brick wall. No ideas are coming to you, a blank page stares back at you, the cursor on the screen blinks begging for you to type. With the advent of AI I think a lot of us were nervous it would take over because it doesn’t have those same blocks. Why trust a human who stumbles when the computer can pop something out in a minute? But what if instead of letting AI do all the work and we just clean up the pieces instead we use AI to help us get out of the blocks and make better content from that?

I used to love making my own learning materials when I taught. When I did tutoring and after-school programming I prided in making whole curriculums and manipulatives. When I started as a middle school educator I would make worksheets, presentations, and projects all from scratch with the help and magic of Canva of course. But what I loved most was making coloring pages. I would make them based off of student suggestions or based on our topics in class and I would thrill to see the children color them in. 

When I left teaching I felt a lot of that creativity was zapped out of my life just because I no longer was creating for a purpose. I had new responsibilities and a different schedule and a million other excuses but all of my creating stopped cold. It wasn’t until a few months into the new job that I realized that a huge stress reliever of doing these little doodles had been lost and it was showing. I longed to create again and I had no place to start. Enter AI. 

I started with Chat GPT asking for drawing prompts and that was fine enough. Then, as I was logging into Chat GPT one day, I saw DALL-E as a login option. DALL-E is an AI image generator and just for shits and giggles I entered in a prompt: “A coloring page based on The Little Mermaid”. I found the results amusing. 

These would not be finished coloring pages ready for little hands with crayons but it sparked something in me. What if I took prompts from DALL-E and turned them into ready to color sheets. Color by who? I don’t know or care, maybe I’d put them on my Teachers Pay Teachers store or maybe, and I liked this option, I could just create for the sake of creating. I plugged in prompt after prompt and once a night after a long day of video marketing I would draw based off an AI generated image. I loved it! I liked the results, I liked the ideas that came from looking at these generated images and I continued to do it. My stress went down, they were fun to share, but I still felt like I was cheating. 

There is a stigma still around using AI and it all comes from people or businesses who are using AI negatively. Stealing images or words from AI and passing them as your own should never be accepted. Companies are creating AI policies around that as we speak (I wrote one up for the company I work for). But I think plugging in a prompt and getting ideas or a framework for your own original work is something that shouldn’t be frowned upon. In my personal opinion I think that it should still be acknowledged that you’re using AI to prompt or inspire your work but I don’t think that is a full requirement. The way I see it is that all art and creativity is stolen from an amalgamation of things that have inspired us. Why is AI any different? 

I’m glad that I’ve found this tool to boost my creativity. It helps relieve my stress and even if its just for me or whether someone else uses it more monetarily I think people really just need to relax. Embrace change, lean into it instead of giving into the fear of it. If not, I think you’re in danger of falling behind. Take a look at the prompts I gave AI and how I transformed them into coloring pages! If you want one to color just hit me up and I'll send it over haha. But really, I encourage you to do the same thing!