Curiosity Beyond Fear: Designer Pablo Stanley on Creativity in the AI Age
"It would be a truly sad future if AI delegated all creative work to robots." Designer Pablo Stanley speaks frankly, but adds, "I don't think that will happen. It will actually be a more collaborative utopia." Pablo is the co-founder and designer of Lumi, an AI-powered image collection platform. Recently acquired by Udemy, Lumi is a collection of images created by thousands of AI creators who were tired of boring, repetitive stock images. He is also the co-founder of several AI-powered creative tools, including Blush and Mushu. But his journey began with a pure childhood fascination with robots. A child growing up in the age of robots "I grew up in a time when robots were the coolest thing ever. Movies, comics, and pop culture were filled with all kinds of versions of robots." Pablo takes up his pen and spends 90 seconds drawing on his childhood inspirations: the Jason Family robot, RoboCop, Blade Runner... The robots of that era weren't simply machines. They had personalities, and they asked themselves, "Am I alive?"—and humans pondered that question along with them. "A dystopian world where robots are not accepted... We're there now." The sketches he drew are reminiscent of the robots people imagined in the 1960s: square bodies, metallic textures, and rugged machines. His proposal is to return to the robots we imagined. "People who make decisions before even trying AI" Many creative professionals are still hesitant about AI. Pablo attributes this to fear of the unknown and the low quality of early AI results. "Just a year ago, we would have laughed at images of six-fingered figures or strange limbs. Such flaws made it easy to dismiss AI. But that's no longer the case." His advice to creators is clear: start with low-risk projects. "I usually tell people to start with something stupid—a low-risk, silly project, just a silly idea. Then you can test what you can actually do and start seeing how it can be applied to real-world work." Lessons Learned from the Browser Wars Everything moves quickly. New tools emerge, existing ones improve... How can you keep up with the times in your daily work? Pablo recalls the browser wars of the past. When one browser developed a feature, others copied and implemented it. Users benefited from this competition. "AI tools are now looking at each other. They're competing, and when a competitor comes up with a useful feature, they try to implement something similar. Now, they all have very similar capabilities." His conclusion: Pick one and stick with it. You'll still get good results, and you won't miss out on much.