How AI unleashed (not replaced) my creativity | Kelly A. Boesch

0:03Kelly A. Boesch: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Few subjects spark as much debate right now as AI and art. Is it a threat to human creativity or a tool that expands it? Visual artist and filmmaker Kelly Besch has spent the last few years exploring this question from the inside, using AI as a central part of how she makes her work. Lately, people have been asking me these same two questions. Is it really art and how do you do it? And this first one's really hard for me to answer because AI art is brand new and we're all still trying to figure out where it fits in.

0:43For the first time, the distance between what I imagined and what I could create has closed.

0:49Kelly A. Boesch: In her talk, Kelly shares how she came to use AI as what she calls a creative collaborator across images, short films, and original music and where that has taken her. She also takes on the questions many artists raise about AIR, including the concern over where these tools get their training material and gives a firsthand look at how she's thinking about a technology that's reshaping the field. It's all coming up right after a short break.

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3:21And now our TED Talk of the day. As an artist, I want to tell you that AI has completely changed the trajectory of my life. Let me show you into some of my worlds. When some people were focused on productivity and efficiency, I'd been focused on trying to figure out how to incorporate AI into my art, like a new paintbrush, a canvas, a camera, a music studio, a doorway into my imagination. I've worked in film production and fashion and most recently as a graphic designer, but nothing has sparked my curiosity like AI has. And my first images were less visionary artists and more, as my friends used to say, what is that?

4:10But I leaned into the strangeness of the AI, and now it has become my signature style. And I feel like I have a new superpower, and I'm only limited by my imagination, which seems to be endlessly filled with ideas now. For the first time, the distance between what I imagined and what I could create has closed. Once AI video was available, I started animating my AI images and making short films. But I felt like something was missing, so I wanted to make my own music to better match the emotion behind my visuals. So I started writing lyrics and using AI to collaborate on the instrumentation. And I draw my inspiration from my lyrics from my visuals or from my life experiences.

4:59And I never thought that my music would take on a life of its own, but it has as I just landed a record deal. Thank you. That feels extraordinary at this chapter of my life. When the music and the visual align perfectly, it can feel like magic. in this next clip I'm going to show you from my video, Quiet Rebellion. I wrote these lyrics about living as your authentic self and wearing your strange like a crown.

5:50Hold our grace in the strange I mean Come a page that refuses to change

6:09Thank you. Thank you. Lately, people have been asking me these same two questions. Is it really art and how do you do it? And this first one's really hard for me to answer because AI art is brand new and we're all still trying to figure out where it fits in. And there's intense feelings on both sides and lots of discussion about AI being trained on other artists' work, as I was as an art major. But when I sit down to create, there's no other artists' work on my screen. I use references from things in nature like flowers or insects, patterns, fashion, or whimsical ideas that have been floating around in my head.

6:51For me, art is personal. I just want to make things that bring me joy. And if they do the same to someone else, well, maybe that's the definition right there. And how do you do it? Let me take you behind the scenes for a moment. This image was made in Midjourney using this prompt. A character in a fairy tale scene in a marketplace, enchanted and cinematic. And it's an OK image, very AI, nothing at all special.

7:17Kelly A. Boesch: Here we see an image on the screen behind Kelly of the software she's referring to, with the prompt she mentions in captions under an image of a computer-animated-looking young woman in a busy, old-fashioned market. Now here's that exact same prompt using my personalization code and the style reference code. In this next image, we see the same text prompt in captions at the bottom of the screen, but the image is completely changed. We see a much more flamboyant image, a computer-generated woman, although she looks more real compared to the first image, with puffy blonde hair and smiling widely with rosy cheeks, wearing a coat made of pastel blues and pinks.

7:54Kelly A. Boesch: The market in the background is more blurred out, more whimsical in feel. And I've worked really hard to get my images to look like this. A lot of trial and error and time spent training the AI on my personal style and aesthetic. When AI is guided by human feeling, empathy and intention, it can become something else entirely. You can't explain creativity, you just follow it. But this is what I do know. I started making the best work of my life since I started using AI as a co-creator. And my life has taken off like a rocket ship. Millions of people have found their way to my work through my social sites and music apps.

8:34And I feel different. I feel lighter. I feel curious again. And I love using this technology to tell stories that are close to my heart. I feel like we're standing at the beginning of a renaissance, and the possibilities are endless. We haven't even tapped into all of the ways to use AI creatively. And people who have never felt creative a day in their life are trying AI and sparking that creativity for the first time. And that's incredible. So my takeaway for today is if you are curious about AI, try to play a little and make something beautiful or make something strange, but let yourself be surprised by what comes out.

9:15But most of all, find your joy.

9:44Thank you so much. Thank you.

9:54That was Kelly A.

9:55Kelly A. Boesch: Besh speaking at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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