Sketching in the age of AI. What's the point?
Many of the storyboard sketches I produced working at an advertising agency were for helping visualise a film scene or potential layout still. Conceptualising ideas that image references alone couldn't quite get across. Look at any presentation deck now though and it will be awash with more AI renders than you can shake a stick at. Which begs the question, 'if AI can visualise anything we can think up, why even bother sketching out ideas?'
Sketching is about finding something new through undirected exploration. A bringing together of one's own mental library of references and filtered through the intuitive motion of pen on paper. Accidental strokes of the pen, consciously retained and pursued to new discoveries. Sketching brings about the 'new', even when drawn from references.
By comparison, whilst impressive, (and I make use of it in most projects), AI generated content is haunted by past forms, remixed together; content that is never truly new, that quickly becomes stale. It creates visuals that are at first impressive, but can't help but leave the bitter aftertaste of algorithmic homogenization in the mouth. Sameness. AI can only give us what is already there. New ideas will not come from the consensus bubble of AI generated images; the aesthetic of the future by definition, cannot be known. It will instead, be found. This is the artistic process.
Thus, futuristic AI is inherently backward looking. I suspect that as derivative AI content becomes even more ubiquitous, consumers and clients will be crying out for something a little more human, more original. Something sketched.
