AI In Visually Based Creative Industries: When The Dust Settles
New technologies often arrive faster than our ability to understand them, and generative AI is no exception. In just a few years, visual AI tools have disrupted creative workflows, challenged legal norms and sparked intense debate across the creative industries. A new study by Tomas Mitkus, Vaida Nedzinskaitė-Mitkė, Rokas Semėnas and Roberta Jablonskytė offers one of the clearest evidence-based views of how these changes are unfolding and what they mean for artists, studios and educators .
Instead of asking whether AI will take over creativity, the authors examine how it is reshaping the creative process itself, from production practices to legal frameworks and ethical expectations. This research aligns closely with AICI’s mission to support responsible, human-centred adoption of AI in Europe’s creative sector.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), just in a few short years, managed to disrupt existing creation, production, and consumption processes in visually-based creative industries. This article is a continuous study that investigates how generative AI affects and reshapes individual creative processes, approach to production execution, legal and ethical understanding, and general attitude towards the technology by analysing ongoing evaluations, criticism and reactions from various creative industries’ segments and government institutions.
AI Is Already Embedded in Creative Workflows
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), just in a few short years, managed to disrupt existing creation, production, and consumption processes in visually-based creative industries. This article is a continuous study that investigates how generative AI affects and reshapes individual creative processes, approach to production execution, legal and ethical understanding, and general attitude towards the technology by analysing ongoing evaluations, criticism and reactions from various creative industries’ segments and government institutions.
Co-creativity Is Emerging as a Practical Response
Rather than replacing artists, the paper highlights the rise of co-creativity — workflows where human and AI inputs are intentionally blended. AI can help explore ideas, generate references or speed up iterations, while artists bring direction, aesthetic judgement and meaning. This shift echoes what we see across AICI: AI is most powerful when used as a creative amplifier, not a substitute.
Legal and Ethical Questions Are Now Central
One of the most significant insights from the study is the urgency of unresolved legal issues around training data, copyright and authorship. AI models rely on huge volumes of human artwork, often without consent, raising questions that courts worldwide are only beginning to address. Ethical concerns such as bias, transparency and public perception also shape how AI can be used responsibly in creative production .
For Europe’s creative industries, this means legal literacy and ethical awareness are becoming essential professional skills.
What This Means for the Future
The conclusion is cautiously optimistic. AI will transform workflows, alter job structures and introduce new creative possibilities, but it will not eliminate the need for skilled artists. Instead, creatives who understand AI’s strengths and weaknesses, who can direct and refine AI-generated material and who maintain a strong artistic identity will remain central to visual industries.
This aligns with AICI’s core message: the future of creative work belongs to those who combine human creativity with intelligent use of emerging tools.