The ROI of AI in Creative Workflows

The Benefits of Embracing AI in Creative Workflows

Yes, it’s tempting to outsource your work to AI and take a long lunch by the beach but you know that’s not going to achieve your long-term goals, don’t you?

We’re not saying work 100 hours a week either. Intelligently using AI in your creative work means you can work a normal, reasonable schedule while still getting these benefits.

Be a human doing human tasks

Things the human mind excels at and is designed to do:

• Creative problem solving
• Identifying meaning and subtext
• Interpreting input from all the body’s senses to assign emotional meaning (besides, like, keeping you alive every day, no bigs)

Things AI excels at and is designed to do:

• Taking in large amounts of data and making emotionless decisions based on that data
• Following instructions literally
• Creating reiterations of training it has received without developing truly new concepts

See how those aren’t even remotely the same things? It’s why you don’t need to worry about AI stealing your job, and why using AI in your work is so beneficial. Save time not to charge less or work less, but to give yourself back more time to do the human things that really impact your customers’ projects.

Do more with less

Less busy work, more end results. Besides “making things faster,” AI helps you:

• Get to market sooner.
• Get over perfectionism and iterate your way to a winning concept.
• Try many ideas at once.
• Try new ideas or concepts you hadn’t thought of.
• Experiment with creative ideas without worrying about wasting budget or time.

How Pixar achieved an impossible animation effect with AI

Source: Pixar

Pixar’s 2023 film Elemental features a character made of fire named Ember. Director Peter Sohn wanted the character to have swirling, fluid flames around her.

However, the studio’s early attempts at animating fire looked “like a ghost or even a demon,” according to Paul Kanyuk, a Technical Supervisor at Pixar. The effect was technically difficult to produce, especially because all viewers know what fire looks like. Meaning it would need to be believable, while also being upbeat.

Creating the final look of Ember with regular special effects would have been massively time-consuming and expensive, with each frame of the movie requiring hands-on effects work. Even for a mega studio like Pixar, that was out of the question.

Luckily, Kanyuk had heard of an emerging AI called neural-style transfer (NST) that essentially turned photo pixels into 3D shapes, able to sort of “mask” characters in video.

After collaborating with Disney Research Labs, Pixar created the exact fire animation for Ember they wanted using the NST AI technology. Although, it still took using the computer GPUs of everyone at Pixar overnight for the processing power needed to render all 1,600 shots. Yowza!

Results: AI technology made the director's vision come to life, which wouldn’t have been possible with traditional animation effects—giving Pixar a cutting-edge technological advantage for future projects with NST.