Machines taking over jobs is nothing new. Robots have become more sophisticated and utilized in factories and warehouses for decades. Apps can now take our pizza orders, negating the need for a human on the end of a phone line, while robots can learn the layout of our homes and efficiently clean our floors (thanks, Roomba). Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), machines can also do complex tasks like transcript audio and make grammar edits in real-time.
Until now, AI was not at a point where it could threaten the jobs of creatives. Besides, visual design is complicated, and software couldnât possibly replicate the ingenuity and emotion of a professional human designer, right?
OpenAIâs software DALL-E, whose name invokes Pixarâs plucky trash-collecting bot WALL-E and Spanish painter Salvador Dali, is capable of generating original art based on natural language prompts. For example, asking DALL-E to construct an image of âa red panda with a cup of coffee, thinking of his good old days, oil paintingâ produces a reasonably accurate and aesthetically pleasing result. Now that OpenAI feels its DALL-E art generator is ready for commercialization and has opened up access, you have to wonder if flesh and blood designers and artists should be concerned that AI will replace their job.