By Luke Nier (BS 26)
Imagine a student who sits down one morning to make an original painting. They struggle for hours picking the right colors, redoing textures, starting over again when it doesn’t look just right. After a few hours and a lot of effort, they have an original piece they are proud of.
On their way to class they overhear some classmates talking about how they have created a professional looking piece of art using generative AI. For a student who has spent years developing and creating their own craft, this can be very unsettling. If anyone can create an image with a few clicks of a button, what happens to the value of the artist who takes hours or even days to create a similar piece? Is AI replacing the need for good communicators and artists?
This same question can be asked beyond artwork; sending emails, writing social media posts, creating graphics, and producing any type of content in the world. As these tools become more readily available students must ask themselves, what makes human creativity so valuable when technology can create at such a quicker rate?
The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1955. Since then, there have been advancements in the field of AI, particularly from 2022 onward with the widespread release of OpenAI’s chat-based models for public use.
Professors at Grace and other universities agree that AI is not taking over the scene, but instead making human creativity, relationships, and artwork more valuable. As Alicia Meyers, Grace College communications professor, puts it, “Only excellent communicators can create something completely new that captures the public’s attention and cuts through the algorithm.”
AI vs Good Communication
Similar to how AI can be used as a tool for art, communication can be helped by AI but is not meant to be fully dependent on AI. This is another great example of quantity vs quality.
AI can quickly write you ten emails or draft a press release in seconds, but in certain contexts it will sound cold, stale, or inauthentic. AI can start off a press release with the opening of, “We are sorry to announce…” However, it can not feel the emotions of the situation or grasp the tone of the people without the communicator doing this work. What does the audience need to hear? Does the tone fit? How will people feel after reading this press release? Communication begins to be more than just five perfect sentences strung together.
Meyer pointed out the convenience of the tool for many aspects of communication.
“It’s massively altering communication. Professionally, AI is capable of writing basic content that used to be the bread and butter of entry-level professionals. It can draft captions, press releases, and announcements more quickly than humans. It can analyze survey data and turn it into a research report for a client. It can even edit photos and videos.”
Meyers says she sees communication practitioners offering work only humans can do, such as offering a personal message following a crisis.
“I am also seeing AI alter interpersonal relationships in profound ways. Particularly last year I observed a sharp uptick in the number of students who reported they used AI when in conflict with a family member or friend. Many students name their AI. They have a connection to it that mirrors our interpersonal relationships, but it cannot engage like a person and satisfy the reciprocal needs we all have. The list goes on and on.”
This is one of the biggest aspects that AI can’t take away from students, employees, and relationships in general. AI can’t be genuine, listen wholeheartedly, or create meaningful relationships with people.
AI vs Human Creativity
For Dr. Kim Reiff, dean of the School of Art and Humanities, art is much more than the pixels that come together on a screen or, similarly, any art that humans practice. AI can generate art and pieces from scratch that humans have never seen before. For some these are tools that help them create things they otherwise never could.
Just because AI can generate or create art does not mean that it is replacing human artists. For Reiff, art is much more than the finished pixels; it’s the creativity, design knowledge, and understanding behind the work that makes it special or original.
Reiff is certain that AI is not taking over the art scene. “If you are an artist, you understand that AI computer-generated images have been around for a very long time, actually since the 50s and 60s. The idea that the artwork is created by the artist’s ingenuity, the artist’s creativity, the artist’s understanding and formal design and the elements of art and principles of design.”
AI is here to stay, but is AI replacing the need for good communicators and artists? The idea of Adobe being a tool for those who know the balance in using it is exactly the same idea when it comes to using AI tools.
Adobe tools have not replaced graphic designers. Digital publishing did not eliminate artists. And Grammarly did not take all jobs from writers. Tools using artificial intelligence do not eliminate any demand for artists; they only showcase those who create in an even brighter spotlight.
God has given us all our own unique gifts, whether that is art, communications, writing, and so on. These gifts reflect his image and therefore the work we create reflects him as well.
Reiff touches on this saying, “There’s a lot of artists using AI to make a collective statement; s a collective memory for a community or trying to create something new. At the end of the day, if it’s God-honoring and it helps somebody find joy or look at the environment in a new way or look at flowers a new way, or look at artwork that they may engage with that they hadn’t thought that they would engage with before.”
AI vs Good Jobs
So to answer the question, is AI replacing the need for good communicators and artists, no; however, there is good reason to be concerned. Ars Technica found that young employment in AI- impacted fields is down 19% compared to AI-resistant occupations. Studies at Stanford University find that entry-level jobs are being highly affected by AI, as older workers are seemingly unaffected at the moment.
Last year, that same study recorded that AI-impacted fields were down only 13%. Similarly, entry-level jobs looking for AI-related skills have nearly tripled since 2025. The Job Outlook Spring Survey is the final report on employer hiring projections for 2026 graduates. According to the survey, one-third of jobs required AI-related skills.
What does this mean for you? The concern has never been that there will be no jobs left for you in the future. Instead, the concern is now how entry-level jobs will look differently for recent graduates.
This does not mean that you should avoid communications, art fields, and heavily dominated AI-related jobs. It means the definition of “good” has changed and might continue to change in the future. Productivity is not the same as efficiency or creativity; those who excel in the workplace over the next twenty years will be those who don’t fight AI but instead rise above it in the ways they can.
