AI, originality and the future of creativity

Chris Randall, Founder and Creative Director of BAFTA-winning animation indie, Second Home Studios, asks what artificial intelligence could mean for the future of creativity and originality.

Artificial intelligence is changing creative industries at a head-spinning pace, and the speed of that change has sparked an important debate about originality, ownership and what the future of creative work might look like. But is the debate moving far too slowly?

Generative AI tools can now produce, or rather mimic, images, music, scripts and video in seconds. But what happens to creativity when the act of creating becomes automated? This question is more pressing than ever. The recent report by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee has warned that AI systems trained on unlicensed creative material pose a “clear and present danger” to the UK’s creative industries.

The concern isn’t simply theoretical. Generative AI models are built by training on vast datasets of human work, without the knowledge or consent of those who created it. The questions about copyright, ownership and fair compensation are difficult and complex. Meanwhile, the screen industry is suffering and studios are closing, although not entirely attributable to the advent of Generative AI.

For those of us who have spent decades working in creative industries, the issue is not about rejecting technology. Every generation of creatives has adapted to new tools, from early photography to advanced visual effects. We’re forced to at least try AI, just to understand its capabilities. Our own studio policy on testing its usage is that every visual prompt must utilise an original sketch and signpost our existing portfolio as its first point of reference.

It’s clear to anyone who experiments with it that AI has the potential to become a powerful tool in the creative toolkit. But that should not be at the expense of an entire creative ecosystem. If the economy was more buoyant, there might be less to worry about, as all those entry-level jobs in post-production, or long-standing artistic roles could potentially transfer to new fields rather than disappearing forever.

At the present direction of travel, the cul-de-sac for the screen industry is obvious. Anyone will be able to make Lord of The Rings in their bedroom for an audience they can count on one hand, because anyone anywhere will be able to do the same. As a shared cultural experience, it will have limited value. Not to mention economically. As for personal fulfilment, it will require as much effort as hanging out the laundry and become meaningless. Right now, I have more creative attachment to something scribbled on the back of an envelope than to anything done in AI. To say nothing of volume, where we are minutes away from hundreds of episodes of Series X being stewed together from scraped IP and churned out to feed the YouTube algorithms, where 84% of kids now consume content. No studio or individual can compete with that, no matter how well-intentioned or editorially curated the work.

Creativity is also rarely a solo pursuit. At Second Home, all our best work is collaborative, and these projects have collectively reached hundreds of millions of viewers, demonstrating that thoughtfully crafted creative work still resonates strongly with audiences.

My own career has always been shaped by experimentation. From tinkering with 16mm time-lapses at university, to teaching myself animation in my lunch hours whilst working in children’s television. That process of trying things, failing and improving, is where real creativity emerges, not by being served a glossy confection which takes no effort. If everything must be perfect first time, you stop taking risks. The artist’s hand is fallible, and those imperfections are part of what makes art worth celebrating. It’s what makes art human. This is no better exemplified than in the medium of stop-motion which is the convergence of craft on so many levels.

Good ideas can come from anywhere, and the best creative environments are the ones where people feel comfortable sharing them. On all our productions, from preschool stop-motion like Tweedy & Fluff, to motion capture performances of primates, working as a team is how we evolve a concept and solve problems. It’s what we relish doing. One of our USPs is the creative front-loading we attribute to development; shaping narratives and understanding what will truly resonate with an audience. The process is iterative and best served with breaks of thinking time and reflection. Open team dynamics allow for flights of fancy but also the sense-checking of tangents. This conversational critique is hard to do when you’re siloed in a bubble having an anaemic idea polished up and sold back to you by an obsequious chatbot.

How images are made and the meaning they carry is also incredibly powerful, especially if they’re engineered. Let’s not forget that youngsters who participated in the 2024 summer riots did so because of what they perceived to be true online. The enhanced photo realism of Generative AI doesn’t just pose a threat to livelihood, but to truth and social stability if used with malintent. Take Grok’s recent abominations. And this from a company whose CEO started out as one of AI’s most vocal opposers.

A more urgent priority for all that computing resource would be to channel it deeper into curing diseases and helping underpin the creaking NHS, not emulating Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop, which I’m sure they would do better in person anyway.

If AI systems are allowed to train on creative work without transparency or fair licensing, the very people who generate these ideas have no control over how their work is used. The recommendations made by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee are so important. Greater transparency around AI training data, clearer copyright protections and stronger safeguards for creators’ identity and style would help ensure the technology develops in a way that supports the creative economy rather than weakening it.

But is this too little too late? The AI genie is only in its infancy, and it has learned at a meteoric rate since those early laughable renditions of Will Smith eating spaghetti. How do we start policing something which has already learned so much about how artists create work? Bots have already gorged themselves on the entirety of humanity’s back catalogue of artistic endeavour. Its head start advantage is huge.

One thing is clear, if the UK wants to remain a global leader in the creative industries, and AI will obviously form a part of this, we must ensure technological innovation develops alongside stronger support for the people who create original work that audiences value, or at least once did. We shouldn’t simply allow the artist’s hand to get airbrushed out of existence by technological expediency.