PILGRIMAGE DESIGN AI POLICY
Created: 24 April 2023
Last reviewed: 1 October 2024
Next review: 1 April 2025
This policy outlines the role artificial intelligence (AI) plays within my creative practice at Pilgrimage Design.
While AI brings many opportunities, there are significant ethical, societal and economic questions posed by its use. Within design, there are specific issues to do with the usage of generative AI, intellectual property and the very nature of creativity.
Given AI's speed of development, this policy requires regular review (the next being 1 April 2025).
What follows are four guiding principles that I am applying to my work through Pilgrimage Design.
1. EMPOWERING HUMANS THROUGH AI
The mission of Pilgrimage Design is to empower and equip Christian entrepreneurs. AI has incredible potential to aid this mission. As such, it should be actively explored as a possible tool, insofar as it serves the purpose of empowering and equipping humans. A particular area of interest for me is how AI can equip entrepreneurs from refugee backgrounds.
2. AI AS A TOOL (NOT A REPLACEMENT) FOR CREATIVITY
Human creativity has always been enabled by tools, from the paintbrush to Photoshop. While AI can clearly replicate this creativity (to an increasingly impressive level), it is my position that it should not be used as more than a tool. Humans, made in the image of the Creator, are fundamentally creative beings. AI can and should be integrated into working practice as a tool if it can enable, expand and open new possibilities for human creativity. It should be the means to an end; not the end in itself.
3. TRANSPARENCY WITH AI USE
AI is integrated into more and more areas of design, often in hidden ways (e.g. automatically removing a photo's background). There has to be an acknowledgement that AI is increasingly part of everyday life, but also clarity that not all AI use is the same. There is a key difference between something being AI-assisted (as in the example of removing a photo's background) and AI-generated. Transparency is a foundation for all my work through Pilgrimage Design. As a result, whenever AI is used as the primary, generative tool for a specific design iteration, process or element, it will be clearly labelled as such.
4. HUMAN EMPATHY AND AI
As AI increasingly transforms the fields of branding, design and communications, I commit to human empathy. This irreplaceable capacity to connect with others on an emotional level has always been at the heart of these fields. This may require more intentionality as AI becomes commonplace. I will continue to create work that is led by human empathy, both internally (e.g. leading clients through an empathetic process for the creation of their brand identity) and externally (e.g. writing a newsletter that celebrates the intersection between Christianity and design).
— Sam Thorogood, Pilgrimage Design
