Can AI replace human creativity? In this third essay of the Crafting the Future series, author, artist, and speaker Galitta Tassa shares the unexpected moment AI made her question her own artistic value—and the deeper realization that transformed the way she sees creativity, technology, and what it means to remain fully human.
Crafting the Future Chapter 3
“I was so upset that I decided to stop making music.” My friend looked at me and continued.
“How can I compete with this? What takes me months to compose, AI can generate in minutes.”
This wasn’t someone who had just discovered music. He had spent his entire life playing instruments, composing, arranging, and producing. Music wasn’t simply what he did.
It was part of who he was. For the first time in his life, he was wondering whether there was still a place for his own creativity. His words stayed with me.
A few months later, I found myself facing a remarkably similar question.
As The Road to Malchuta was nearing publication, an editor who had read the manuscript said:
“This shouldn’t only be a book. It should become an animated film for the whole family.”
Another person imagined something entirely different.
“This world could become a game.” Their excitement was contagious.
I had already spent years illustrating the book by hand, searching patiently for Queen Sheba’s face. “It will take me ages to illustrate that.” I got nervous, but suddenly I became curious.
One evening, I opened my computer. I had already started developing graphics with AI for one of my events, and I began to find the look and style I like for the archetypes I work with.
Together with an AI agent, I carefully described one of the story’s scenes. I described what I saw in my mind’s eye, how it felt, the symbols, the colors, the angle.
Then the first images appeared. I corrected, asked for changes here and there until it felt right.
I leaned closer to the screen. One image. Then another.Then another.
Each one seemed more cinematic than the last. It was fun. The lighting. The atmosphere.
The textures. It felt as though the world I had carried inside me for years had suddenly stepped onto a movie screen.
I was delighted. I was fascinated.
And then…
almost without noticing…
another feeling entered the room.
Fear.
My eyes drifted from the screen to the pile of drawings lying beside me. Years of sketching. Years of searching. Years of changing the curve of an eye by the smallest amount until something finally felt true.
I looked back at the AI images. Then back at my drawings. A thought appeared that I wasn’t proud of. “Maybe these don’t matter anymore.” It is not easy to admit that. Especially as an artist.
Later, I realized something important. It wasn’t AI that frightened me. It was the voice inside me that immediately started comparing. The voice that forgot the years. The voice that only saw the polished result.
For a brief moment, I forgot that those drawings had never been only about creating illustrations. They had been creating me.
AI generated remarkable images in seconds. My drawings took years. At first, that felt unfair.
Then something shifted. The years were never the price I paid for the drawings.
The years were shaping the artist who could eventually find the face, the message that emerged from the colors and shapes. It gave me countless hours of pleasure and peace. In those meditative sessions of practicing with different media.
No algorithm could have lived those years for me.
I thought again about my musician friend. How many writers…painters…designers…photographers…filmmakers… are quietly putting away their notebooks, brushes, cameras, or instruments because they believe they can no longer compete?
Perhaps competition was never the point. Perhaps creativity was never meant to be a race against a machine.
As I sat with those questions, something became beautifully clear. I wasn’t looking at two versions of the same artwork. I was looking at two completely different creative journeys.
One had been born through years of observation, mistakes, patience, and discovery. The other had emerged through an extraordinary collaboration with a new technology that opened possibilities I had never imagined.
For the first time, I stopped asking,
Which one is better?
And I began asking a far more interesting question.
What if they both belong?
Today, I no longer see my drawings competing with AI. I see them sitting around the same table.
One carries patience. The other carries possibility. One remembers. The other imagines. One connects me to where I came from. The other invites me to explore where we might go.
Perhaps the future of creativity is not choosing between human imagination and technology.
Perhaps it is learning the wisdom to know when each one serves the story.
A question for you
Have you ever encountered a new technology that first made you doubt yourself…only to discover that it eventually expanded your creativity instead?
I’d genuinely love to hear your story.
Next week, I’ll share why I no longer believe the biggest question about AI is what it can create.
I think the far more important question is what it invites us to become.
Continue the Journey
If this essay resonated with you, you may also enjoy:
→ Chapter 1 — What Searching for Queen Sheba Taught Me About Creativity, AI & Staying Human
→ Join The Conscious Creator, my newsletter exploring creativity, voice, humanity, and the future.
