From Digital Craft to Automation: Exploring the Trade-Of Between Traditional Digital Skills and Automation in the Creative Arts

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) for image and video creation is rapidly reshaping the creative industry. This technology enables people to produce complex visuals without specialized software expertise, challenging traditional notions of creativity, authorship, and design. This chapter explores how the creative industry is navigating this shift and its ethical, social, and cultural implications. Using a mixed-methods approach, it examines how generative AI affects perceptions of agency, alters workflows, and redefines creative skillsets. Findings reveal a central tension between the sense of empowerment enabled by AI, and the need for control in the creative workflow. AI is perceived as liberating for rapid ideation and cost savings, at the expenses of expressive and ethical compromises. The process risks bypassing iterative and embodied stages of digital craft, trading critical reflection for speed and scalability, especially under mass-production logics. Digital craft is not replaced, rather integrated into hybrid workflows with AI that require continuous monitoring and discussion in an increasingly automated landscape.