AI Policy
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we all work, including the creative industry. My general philosophy is simple: AI is great for productivity, not creativity.
When you hire me, you’re hiring me for my experience, judgment, and perspective. AI might support some logistical parts of my process, but the thinking and creative work are mine.
How I use AI
I use AI behind the scenes for practical, non-creative tasks, much like I use search engines, spellcheck, and other productivity tools. That might include organizing or summarizing information, troubleshooting technical problems, refining existing language, or handling administrative tasks.
Used this way, AI lets me keep my time and attention focused where they matter most: strategy, ideas, art direction, and design.
How I don't use AI
I don’t use AI to generate creative concepts or produce finished design and illustration work. My clients are hiring me to think critically about their organization, target audience, and goals, and to translate that thinking into meaningful creative work. Using AI to generate something that looks plausible isn’t a substitute for that process.
I also take client confidentiality seriously. I don’t upload confidential, sensitive, or proprietary client information to public generative AI systems.
There are important legal and ownership considerations around AI-generated creative work. Purely AI-generated material may not qualify for copyright protection, and using AI-generated imagery, writing, or other creative content can introduce questions around authorship, licensing, and intellectual property. For my clients, I believe the clearest approach is to keep generative AI out of the creative process altogether.
Creative collaboration works best when the people involved are actually involved. Please don’t upload my proposals, drafts, source files, or other original work into generative AI systems. Doing so raises intellectual property concerns and removes the work from the strategy and context that shaped it.
I also ask that feedback on creative work come from you, not from an AI tool. You know your organization, audience, goals, history, and brand. I bring expertise in interpreting all of that and translating it into visual and verbal communication. The strength of our collaboration comes from putting those two kinds of human experience together.
I’m designing for your organization and your audience, not for ChatGPT. You don’t need to turn your thoughts into polished creative direction either. “Something about this just isn’t working for me” is a perfectly reasonable place to start. Part of my job is asking the right questions to understand why and find a solution.
I’m comfortable navigating candid feedback, strong opinions, difficult conversations, and messy problems. I’d much rather hear what you actually think and work through it together than receive a formulaic critique generated by something that wasn’t part of the process and doesn’t understand the nuances of being human.
AI-generated critique can sound authoritative without knowing the conversations, strategy, constraints, and decisions behind the work. It can contradict itself or introduce recommendations that conflict with decisions we’ve already made, creating unnecessary confusion and pulling the work away from its goals. It also tends to give the same recommendations to everyone, which is why it’s so easy to spot an AI poster.
AI shouldn’t become a third art director in the room. Good creative work depends on context, conversation, and trust between the people actually making it. If something isn’t hitting the mark, tell me. We’ll figure out why, together.
A human creative partnership
AI is here to stay, and I’m interested in where the technology goes next. It’s already improving productivity and access to information, with promising applications in healthcare, communication, research, security, and other fields.
What I’m not interested in is using it to replace the parts of my work that require experience, judgment, curiosity, and human connection. I draw a line when AI replaces creative thinking or undermines authorship, confidentiality, intellectual property, or the relationship between designer and client.
Ultimately, the principle is pretty simple: I want the work we create together to come from us.
Edited with permission from the original AI Policy at Foran Concepts