5 Things to Do Before You Decide AI Is the Death of Creativity
Fear about AI is valid. So is anger. But an informed opinion beats a borrowed one, and we need your fully awake self at the table while this technology is still being shaped.
I've been in a lot of rooms lately. Writers' chats, conference hallways, comment threads. And the conversation about AI almost always goes one of two ways.
Either AI is going to save us, or it's going to end us.
If you're a writer or an artist, the "end us" version comes with a particular sting. It's not just your job on the line. It's the thing you love, the thing you've organized your life around. Looming larger than that, many fear AI could end the creative part of us that has been thinking up stories for millennia.
So let me start here: the fear is valid. The anger about how this technology was built, on scraped work, without consent, with enormous environmental costs, almost no transparency, and very little understanding of its impact on our creative processes, is also valid. I'm not here to talk you out of any of it.
But I want to make a case for something that keeps getting lost in the noise.
Your informed opinion matters just as much as your fear. I don’t mean that you have to embrace AI. Not at all.
But if you can arrive at a position through your own experience, so that you know enough to ask for what you want, you will have a say in how we collectively steer the future. Because this technology is being trained, deployed, and pointed in a direction right now, and the people who understand it are the ones who get to influence where it goes.
If creatives opt out of understanding it, we don't stop AI. We just remove ourselves from the room where it's being decided.
I believe that the choice was never "use AI" or "ban AI." It's will you be informed enough to have a real say in what happens next.
Here are five things to do before you plant a flag on any side of the AI conversation. None of them require you to like AI. They just require you to know what you're talking about.
1. Audit where you're getting your information
When something scares us, we grab the first source that confirms what we already feel. It's human, and it's also how you end up repeating a statistic from a single, poorly designed study.
So look at your information diet. Where are you learning about AI? Is it rage-bait reposts, or people seriously tracking what's happening?
A few sources I trust because they're thoughtful rather than hype-driven: the Hard Fork podcast from the New York Times, The AI Daily Brief, and the Artificial Intelligence Show from Smarter X. I also read books like A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind to get past the daily churn and into the bigger patterns.
You don't have to follow my list. You do have to ask whether you're informed, or just well-supplied with ammunition.
“The choice was never use AI or ban AI. It’s whether you’ll be informed enough to have a real say in what happens next.”
2. Get clear on what's true right now, and stay open to it changing
A lot of the AI conversation runs on half-facts. People are certain about data use, copyright, privacy, and environmental impact, and much of what they're certain about is either outdated or was never true.
A few things worth understanding for yourself, because they're within your power to learn:
What generative AI can and can't do today. It's very good at drafting, summarizing, brainstorming, and reflecting your ideas back to you. It's unreliable with facts, it makes things up, and it has no lived experience to draw from. Knowing the real edges of the tool deflates both the hype and the panic.
What you can control. In tools like ChatGPT and Claude, you can often turn off the setting that lets them train on what you type. Do you know where that toggle lives in the app you use? That's a five-minute thing to learn, and it changes how it feels to use these tools.
What the rules are where you live. In the US, for example, purely AI-generated text can't be copyrighted, because it isn't human authorship, and it has to be disclosed when you register a copyright. The rules differ by country and they keep shifting.
Here's the part I think matters most: be willing to say "I don't know." Things are moving so fast that what was true six months ago may be wrong today. Holding your values steady while staying genuinely open is not weakness. In this landscape, it's the most honest posture available.
3. Use the tools
This is the step people are most ambivalent about, but it's the one that changes everything. You can't have a grounded opinion about something you've never touched.
Pick one tool and give it a real month. I'd start with Claude, where a subscription runs about $20 a month, but ChatGPT or Gemini work too. The point is to go past free-tier dabbling and live with it for a while.
The single most useful thing I can tell you: treat it like a conversation with a sharp new intern, not a vending machine.
One prompt in, one answer out, "well, that was mediocre," then quitting? That isn't using the tool. That's testing whether it'll fail so you can stop. It will fail if you do that. Keep going instead.
A few ways to prompt that make a real difference:
Give it context and a role. Not "write me a blog post," but "You're a tough but kind editor. Here's a messy draft of my thoughts. Ask me three questions, one at a time, that would sharpen this before I write anything."
Push back and keep going. "This opening sounds like every other post. Give me options for a better hook into this piece, maybe starting with a specific moment instead." The second and third tries are where it gets good.
Use it to think, not just to produce. "I'm stuck on what to prioritize today. Here’s what I’m working on. Interview me and ask me what I'm avoiding so I can accomplish more than what I was hoping for." That one has gotten me unstuck more than once.
If you're working on something bigger, learn what a "project" is. It's a workspace where you can upload your own material, like your manuscript, your notes, documents and images you own, so the tool knows your work instead of guessing. You can also set custom instructions so it stops defaulting to that bland, chipper AI voice. The difference between a first-day intern and one who has read your whole catalog is enormous.
4. Find one (real) person to talk to
We're processing a massive collective shift in near-total isolation, and it's making us rigid and lonely.
So find one person you trust enough to be honest with. Not to debate, but to compare notes. Ask them how they're using AI, if at all. Where they get their information. What they're most afraid of, and what, if anything, gives them hope.
You'll learn more from one honest conversation than from a hundred threads where everyone performs certainty at each other.
5. Imagine the future you'd actually want
Here's the question I keep returning to, and I'd offer it to you. Take it on a walk, into your journal, or into that conversation with your one trusted person.
If you could design an intelligence that truly supported your creative dream, with no downsides, no extraction, no catch, what would it look like?
Who would own it? How would it be powered? Who would have access? What would it help you make that you can't make now?
This is a way to find out what you want, instead of only knowing what you're against. It's far easier to fight a thing than to describe the better version you'd build in its place.
We're the ones shaping AI
Here's where I've landed, at least for today.
We are not passive recipients of whatever the tech companies hand us. We're the people using these tools, adopting them, refusing them, bending them toward some uses and away from others. That collective behavior is a kind of vote, and it's being counted right now.
If creatives stay out of the room, out of understanding, out of the conversation, then the people building this technology get to decide what creativity is worth without us.
I'd rather we were there. Informed, clear-eyed, still skeptical where skepticism is earned, and awake to what we want.
The definitions are still being written. I'd like us to hold the pen.
I'm Jennifer Lewy, author of the Game of Paradise YA sci-fi series. The books imagine a future where the United States collapses and then rebuilds under a powerful AI called the NEWRRTH. I've been featured in the Detroit Free Press for pioneering AI use in the creative process.
If you want thoughtful, grounded writing about AI, creativity, and the future of storytelling, join my newsletter. You'll get the free prequel, When the Light Came, when you sign up.
Explore the Game of Paradise series: The One Game | The One Exiled | The One Reborn (coming 2026)
Last edited May 26, 2026