AI-powered tools are fundamentally changing the ways creative people work. Professional copywriters and designers are being asked to spend time training internal AI-powered systems, while AI tools are becoming the standard inside video and photo editing programs.
Generative AI isn’t going anywhere, and there are plenty of ways creatives can integrate these tools into their workflow to stay ahead of the curve. This article will explore the ways that you can start using generative AI as part of your creative process.
Why AI matters in creative workflows
AI is useful for creative workflows because it can speed up the process of creativity. There is a long tradition of creative people using tools outside of their medium to get the ideas flowing.
Painters make practice sketches, filmmakers create storyboards, and photographers set up lighting tests. AI tools are just one more way for creative people to brainstorm ideas and automate tedious tasks. Adding an AI-powered tool to your process doesn’t replace your creativity, rather it has the power to increase your creative output. AI tools can also increase the speed and scale of your work, and lead to more inspiration.
AI in video
Editing tools
Many popular video editing tools already use AI-powered tools to streamline editing capabilities, like auto-cutting, scene detection, image stabilization, and background removal making the editing process simpler and faster.
Adobe’s Generative Extend tool in Premiere Pro lets you add frames and lengthen ambient sound, while the Speech to Text tool speeds up the captioning process. Programs like CapCut can automatically turn a long video into a social-media friendly short.
Content generation
The AI-powered tools inside video editing programs like CapCut can also build customizable AI characters that can lip-sync a pre-recorded speech. Premiere Pro’s text-based editing feature allows video editors to quickly assemble rough cuts, editing the same way you would edit a text document. Tools like AI B-roll generation can help you track down something similar quickly, without having to schedule a day to reshoot.
Audio
Motion Array’s AI voice generator is a text-to-speech tool that makes it easy to create quality voiceovers in a variety of languages. For content creators looking to reach a global audience, an AI-powered tool like this means you don’t need to find translators and voice actors.
Tools like background noise removal can eliminate distracting noises quickly. Adobe Premiere Pro’s AI-powered Auto-Ducking tool automatically adds keyframes so that dialogue, background music, and sound effects are never competing for your viewers attention.
Color and style
Premiere Pro’s Auto-Color makes basic corrections quickly. If you’re looking to make your video project stand out you can automate the process of color-grading using an AI-powered LUT for a more cinematic look or one of Motion Array’s LUTs. LUTs are a great tool to match clips from different cameras or shot in different lighting conditions to give your project a more polished feel.
How it’s being used
Social media content creators and influencers are already using AI-powered editing tools to get their content in the hands of their viewers in real time. Social media apps like TikTok and Instagram already feature a number of AI-powered tools that speed up the editing process. But then there’s influencers that are fully generated by AI, like Lil Miquela.
Lil Miquela may not be “real” — the team behind the AI influencer is a tech company called Dapper Labs — but that hasn’t stopped the AI-generated influencer from picking up brand deals with clients like Puma, Prada, and Samsung. Miquela’s likeness has also brought awareness to the National Marrow Donor Program.
AI tools are also reshaping the world of B2B videos, making it faster for businesses to produce in-house videos without having a massive team. Tools like auto-generated captions, content generation tools, and AI-powered edits mean a business can move from video ideation to completed project super quick. But the use of hyperrealistic AI avatars is on the rise too.
This B2B video from VidYard, a video company that specializes in creating hyper-realistic avatars for sales videos and product demo videos, features an AI-created avatar, modeled after the likeness of VidYard’s CEO.
VidYard’s use of a hyper-realistic avatar is an example of how businesses are using AI to streamline communication to potential clients and company stakeholders. Using a hyper-realistic avatar of a CEO means that communication and marketing departments can create content without relying on the availability of a busy founder.
AI in design
AI-powered tools allow designers to quickly create prototypes, test out different color palettes, and explore a variety of fonts. When the ideation process moves faster it gives designers more time to focus on refining the final creative design. And the ability to automate these once time-consuming tasks is even creating a pipeline for designers to morph into creative directors because they have more time to focus on the big picture.
Image generation
Generative AI is great for speeding up designers’ workflows, too. AI can also be used as an ideation tool, allowing a designer to explore more ideas in less time through text prompts. Artlist’s AI-powered text-to-image generator is a useful tool for starting that creative process.
AI-powered editing tools have been integrated into the Adobe suite, making it easier for designers to quickly remove distracting elements from images and automate the process of retouching images. Then there are open source platforms like Nano Banana and Flux Kontext that allow you to remove backgrounds and edit objects without even opening a design program. Check out how the two platforms stack up against each other in performing simple image generation tasks in the video below.
Layout and branding
Programs like Adobe Firefly help designers and creators to generate high-quality mockups for design layouts and branded projects to kickstart the creative process. The software can transform written text to images or vector graphics, generate stylized typography, and build Firefly boards for easier collaboration with clients.
It’s also great for designers who need to create logos and mockups for client approval before they dig into the actual work. Firefly is particularly useful because it easily integrates with Adobe programs that professional designers use every day, meaning creatives can move from the ideation process to the design refinement process quickly.
Personalization
AI-savvy designers can use tools like Generative Match and Custom Models to train Firefly to replicate their distinct style or the aesthetics of a particular brand that they are making work for.
The personalization capabilities of AI-powered tools apply to both image generation and design layout.
The Custom Models tool is very helpful for designers working on big-name accounts that follow strict brand guidelines and need to maintain consistency across projects.
The Generative Match tool lets designers train AI to match their unique style and even fine-tune exactly how much the AI-generated images line up with the original one.
AI design use cases
Designers across the world are already integrating AI-powered tools into their creative workflow.
Check out how Myriam Phung of My My Graphics uses a rough illustration featuring simple shapes and Adobe Firefly’s AI-powered tools to generate and refine imagery for a mockup that could easily be used by a coffee company or a coffee mug company.
Notice that although the bulk of the ideation work and image generation was done using an AI-powered tool, Phung finalized her design in Photoshop. These AI-powered tools aren’t going to replace designers, but they can help them work much faster
AI in sound
Music generation
AI companies like Suno and Udio are changing the landscape when it comes to the ways in which music is created. Both companies faced lawsuits over how they trained their models, but now they’re working on licensing deals with major labels — a big sign that AI in music is here to stay.
Plenty of questions still need answers, but what’s clear is that AI is opening the door for more people to create, experiment, and share music than ever before. For working musicians, AI can be a handy tool in the early stages, sketching out demos, trying new styles, or testing ideas before heading into the studio. We’ve already seen how far this can go. Take The Velvet Sundown, a band that turned out to be fully AI-generated. Even after the reveal, they kept building an audience and now pull in hundreds of thousands of monthly streams. AI-made music can connect with listeners, whether the industry’s ready for it or not.
Not all platforms are taking the same route, though. Soundraw.io, for example, trains its software using in-house musicians, creating AI music without stepping into copyright trouble. For filmmakers and podcasters, that means you can confidently use tracks in rough cuts to nail down pacing and mood before locking in the perfect royalty-free music for the final project.
AI music is still evolving, but it’s already a powerful tool for creators who want to move faster, experiment more, and push their projects further.
Sound design
AI-generated sounds can be great for more complicated sound effects — especially for sci-fi and horror projects — where the sounds you are trying to find aren’t necessarily something that can be found in the real world. Finding something that sounds like an exploding alien creature is going to take time. Using an AI-generated placeholder can be a great stand-in while you are working on a rough cut and searching for the perfect sound to bring your project together.
If you are working with a limited budget and need more generic effects in your sound design, a few well-placed AI-generated sound bites can be helpful too.
Voice AI
Tools like Motion Array’s AI voice generator make it easy to create high-quality voiceover . This tool can also translate any voice into multiple languages, which is great if you are trying to reach a global audience. AI-powered tools can be also helpful in cloning and dubbing voices into different languages,useful for translating audiobooks and podcasts to reach new markets.
Mixing and mastering tools
Mixing is all about adjusting the levels of different instruments so that everything fits together nicely. Mastering is the final step of the recording process and focuses on keeping the sound consistent regardless of what device it’s being played through. Downloadable AI-powered plugins like Waves and LANDR can be used in conjunction with a DAW to streamline the process of mixing and mastering a music track. Let’s take a closer look at some of the AI-powered tools that recording professionals and musicians are already using to streamline the mixing and mastering process.
How musicians are creating music and sound with AI
AI-powered tools help musicians generate ideas for new chord progressions for different sections of a song once they are recording — great for when you are feeling a little creatively stuck.
Waves AI-powered EQ known as Curves AQ uses machine-learning to generate audio curves to get your tracks sounding exceptional in just a few clicks, cutting distracting frequencies and boosting others for a more dynamic listening experience. The plugin also includes intuitive controls so that as the creator you still get the final say. Check out some of music’s most well-known names, using the new tech for the first time.
The LANDR Stems plugin is powered by AudioShake’s AI tech and can automatically separate multi-track files into individual stems. Once the tracks have been separated into individual stems you can edit each track individually while mixing and gives you more options for remixing and sampling. Tools like this one let music creators achieve studio-quality mixes without the need of expensive equipment or a state-of-the-art recording studio.
Mastering is an important part of the recording process, but one that many sound engineers find to be tedious and stressful. Mastering a track is how you make sure that the song sounds the same whether it’s being played through small headphones or massive speakers. It’s also specialized to different formats — a digital track requires slightly different parameters than something that is being pressed on vinyl.
Check out the video above to see how AI tools are helping simplify the mastering process, too. With just a few clicks, you can generate three different mastering styles, working directly with your DAW.
Pros and cons of AI in creative work
AI tools can be useful for creatives, not replacing you, but as a great collaborative tool.
Here are some pros and cons to consider when integrating AI tools into your creative process.
| Pros: | Cons: |
| Great tool for finding inspiration, speeding up the ideation process | Ethical issues related to copyright/licensing |
| Automation of time-consuming tasks leaves more time for creativity | Content can become unoriginal if you rely on AI too much for ideas |
| Reduces need for expensive equipment and reduces production costs | AI data centers increase power and water consumption |
| Increases speed and scalability | |
| Creativity is accessible to more people |
The future of AI
AI tools are fundamentally reshaping the ways creative people work and the ways we think about creativity. These powerful tools are already being integrated into many industry-standard video, photo, audio, and design programs. How creatives can use them for ideation, rapid prototyping, and increasing creative speed is expanding every day.
AI is changing the workflows, career paths, and productivity of creative teams at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to know exactly where things are heading. In just a few years, we’ve already seen a massive expansion of cross-disciplinary AI tools, where video, sound, and design tools work together more seamlessly. There’s also been a huge increase in the functionality of collaborative tools that allow multiple members of a creative team to use AI tools to work on a single project at once.
In the coming years, it’s likely that AI-powered tools will offer more options for personalization, so that creatives can actually train AI to imitate their specific style. These advances hopefully mean that the tedious parts of creative work become more efficient.
Making AI work for you
AI-powered tools aren’t going anywhere. There are a lot of powerful AI-powered tools changing the ways we work, and it can feel a little overwhelming at first. But a flooded market can actually be a great time to experiment and figure out what AI tools work best with your creative workflow.
