Don't Let ChatGPT Steal Your Creative Muscles

Remember the good ol’ days when we would have to drive somewhere but we didn’t have smartphones with Google Maps and yet… we would just… drive there? 🗺️

Somewhere down the figurative road, most of us started to use Google Maps as a crutch, even for rides when we knew how to get there without maps.

“I’ll just check for traffic.” “Let’s see exactly what minute I’ll arrive.” “Maybe there’s a backroad I don’t know about.”

Next thing you know, we regularly use Maps for rides we don’t actually need plain old navigation for. We outsource the thinking part of the task to make life more efficient.

Which maybe is… fine? But also, maybe it’s making us less confident in our own ability to navigate ourselves?

I honestly think the latter. And, I fear, a similar effect is already in motion with creatives over-relying on ChatGPT.

With time, brilliant minds may lose confidence in their own creativity — and that’s bad news for a world that relies on innovation and human connection.

ChatGPT can churn out content faster than any of us can. But I’m not interested in content making as much as I’m interested in culture building.

I’m not as stoked about optimization as I am in connection.

I’d rather read something messy and provocative than something polished and informational.

Thanks to AI, you can create without being creative.

But I believe that your beautifully imperfect human experience is what makes your creation shine — and is something ChatGPT just can’t emulate in the way your brain cells today, with your current energy and in your current environment and current singular human experience, can.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there are some great applications for AI/Large Language Models (LLM), including for creators and small business owners. (Like me!)

Where I’ve had growing frustration, though, is:

• When I can tell that creators are valuing efficiency over impact. (Quantity over quality, for example.)

• Seeing the same damn patterns in endless media posts and publications. “It’s not about X, it’s about Y.” “No A. No B. Just C.” “You’re not broken. You’re just [insert whatever stupid ass pain point here].” ← HARD EYE ROLL 😬

• Noticing folks I admire or work with defaulting to ChatGPT too early in the creative process.

And here’s what I believe that all leads to:

• A lack of truly new ideas. After all, a LLM is based on predictions of words in a sequence of text, coming from a body of existing text. In other words, it’s giving you “ideas” based on ideas that already exist, AKA not an innovative, original idea that nobody’s ever thought of before (when perhaps your brain could).

• Creators giving up on themselves. I want to work with humans who are messy, experimental, edgy, ALIVE. Relying on ChatGPT smooths out the edges that make you stand out, waters down your contradictions to a perfectly inhuman formula. When you can’t enjoy your own creative, messy quirkiness, you’ll quit sooner because it just doesn’t feel you.

• A creative atrophy in humans. If we’re all recycling and repurposing the same ideas again and again, where are the groundbreaking ideas going to come from?

So, where do we go from here? 😅 A few thoughts:

• Challenge yourself to get through the first couple steps of the creative process without help from any AI. If you want to use it, tap it in for editing, iteration, or revising. But your most brilliant ideas will start with your own brain.

• Prioritize experience over information. Any robot can throw more information at us. But people collaborate with people because they want some sort of experience, story or transformation — not because they simply want more facts.

• Your creativity isn’t a machine designed for linear efficiency. It’s a nature-based process, a cycle, that ebbs and flows with energy and time and environment. What if you let your creative energy ramp up and down throughout the cycle instead of trying to be ON all the time?

Before you send me hate mail, I get it. This is nuanced, because being a human is nuanced, and everything in this weird digital world is confusing and contradictory and constantly shifting.

So. Feel free to use ChatGPT to help you create a recipe with the half an avocado, old bag of quinoa and dregs of tzatziki sauce left in the fridge. Let it help you project business income in Q4. Let it summarize that meeting you skipped that could’ve been an email. Ask it why your fiddle leaf fig suddenly has white spots. Hell, even use it to come up with the perfect metaphor or suggest changes after you’ve made it through a draft or three.

But, I am begging you, do not let AI make you become boring.

Do not allow it to make you so polished, so efficient, so “on brand” that you let your creative muscles atrophy. Your audience will feel it. You will feel it.

It’s a lot harder to build back your quads and hammies after a year off of the weights than it is to keep them strong with ongoing strength training. Keep those creative muscles strong by using them on a regular basis. A digital Shake Weight won’t do the job.

And look, clearly, I’m not an expert here. Like, I’ve used “ChatGPT” as a synecdoche all throughout this post when I really could be talking about Claude or whatever else the hot model is — I just don’t even know what to call it. *shrugs*

But I do know what it can do to people like me. Of course I’ve deep-experimented with ChatGPT myself. Sometimes, it helps! Most times, I can do better! And in my toughest times — the moments that are the most messy human — I feel the urge to “just ask ChatGPT” what I should do…

But how in the world could a gigantic set of 1s and 0s possibly grasp my personal stories, sadness, joy, curiosity, and aspirations more than I could myself if I just let myself sit still for a minute?

My best creative surges come with plain old brainstorming, focus sessions, or, most often, on a trail run. I’m not worried for my own creative future.

Because for what it’s worth, I don’t think ChatGPT is going to replace us. I think it’s going to make the wildest, bravest creators shine even more.

Wondering how you got here? Hi, I’m Angie! 👋 I’m a creative director and not-elite-just-enthusiastic athlete living in the mountains and rivers of Washington. I talk about the tough stuff — Blood, Sweat, and Fear — with the goal of building a happier, healthier world for women. You can check out all the ways to work with me here, or follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn.

For Fall 2025, I currently have some space available for 1:1 women’s creative consulting as well as sports and outdoor brand support.