Introducing Charismatic.ai
A large-scale creative AI project to chart a future for technology developed from within the creative sector
In ecology, edge effects are used to describe the changes in biodiversity that occur at the boundary of two ecosystems. As the edge effects increase, the more biodiversity flourishes at the intersection. As the human population has boomed, landscapes have become increasingly developed and urbanised, causing landscapes to fragment and increasing the likelihood of edge effects to occur. One major consequence of this landscape fragmentation is that generalist species, particularly invasive ones, are able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental contexts and as a result, benefit from the creation of edge effects. Whereas specialist species, often are intolerant to edge effect spaces and suffer as a result of the change. Over time, specialist species may weaken, decline and become extinct.
The UK creative industries are financial powerhouses awarded internationally for writing, art, video games, film, television and other creative talent. For proof, you just need to look at the numbers. Government statistics show that the creative industries grew by 6.8% in 2022 and contributed £124.6bn to the national economy. That’s more than the UK car industry, or aerospace, oil and gas. Using the government’s official measure of Gross Value Added (GVA), the UK’s creative industries accounted for 5.7% of total national GVA. In addition, the creative industries are showing extraordinary growth. In real terms, the economic value of the UK creative industries is 12% bigger than before the pandemic and has expanded by more than 50% since 2010. For comparison, the UK’s economy increased by 21.5% during the same period.
But while these numbers and percentages track the rise and rise of the creative industries, they give little away in terms of what the experience is like to work within them. It’s only when you start to unpack who is represented by the phrase ‘creative industries’, analyse international capital flows and map socioeconomic, digital and technical changes that a different picture begins to emerge. The headline? This picture of growing and thriving creative industries is experienced disproportionately by the few, and not the many.
According to DCMS, the creative industries comprise of 9 sub-sectors. These include:
Advertising and marketing
Crafts
Film, TV, video, radio and photography
Museums, galleries and libraries
Publishing
Architecture
Design and designer fashion
IT, software and computer services
Music, performing and visual arts
In a 2024 report analysing foreign direct investment (FDI) in the creative industries, the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC) shows the breakdown of FDI by creative industry sub-sector. Over 70% of FDI projects in 2023 were in IT, software and computer services in 2023. The remaining share of inward FDI projects is distributed predominantly across two sub-sectors: advertising and marketing (10%) and film, TV, radio and photography (7%). One of the impacts of being the sub-sector that receives the lion’s share of foreign investment, is that you can pay your workers more, and this can clearly be seen in the data. According to data from the UK’s largest hiring platform Totaljobs, tech professionals are the best paid workers in the UK with an average annual salary of £50,377. In 2023, tech professionals also saw their salaries rise more than the UK average; 5% compared to the average of 3.4%.
If you’re employed in the content production and, or storytelling sub-sectors like advertising, film and TV however, it’s very likely that your experience of working in the creative industries doesn’t align with the growing and thriving picture painted by the above statistics.
The socioeconomic changes as well as the technical and digital transformations that creators are up against are staggering. There’s been a decline in cinema attendance (down 30% since 2019) and television audiences. The family TV is now the device of choice to watch YouTube at home. Advertising budgets have shifted to social media making it the largest channel worldwide in terms of ad spend. Streaming platform commercial models have reinvented business models and payment terms – creation fees and residuals have given way to just flat fees. Platforms also hold the power to take down a show and with it, pull a creator from the market after one series. There were also the SAG-AFTRA (formerly the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strikes which went on for 118 and 148 days respectively. Ironically, the US Actors and Writers strikes over disappearing residuals, squeezed UK media freelancers to the point where 75% of that workforce reported being out of work at the time. In the US, the Art Directors Guild has responded to the disheartening US workforce stats by pausing its training courses as it “cannot in good conscience encourage you to pursue our profession while so many of our members remain unemployed.”
Amongst all that, there was a global pandemic too.
And then generative AI appeared. This is where the Charismatic.AI story begins.
Charismatic.AI is an active response to Big Tech developing generative AI technologies that impact the content and storytelling sectors.
Our aim is to create new possibilities – new edge effects – where storytellers meet technology. One or more industry sub-sectors shouldn’t have to decline in order for one to succeed. As Christopher Smith, AHRC Executive Chair and UKRI’s says: “Investing in the creative industries isn’t just about making money or new technologies, it’s about living together in a better society.”
We’ve seen the potential of a thriving partnership between AI and creativity through the Charismatic.AI group’s decades of practical experience. This includes recent use of generative AI in a 3D dream simulation called Project Electric Sheep, experimenting with interactive storytelling in an immersive video game adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic sci fi novel The Kraken Wakes, and building Charisma.ai as an interactive AI-supported writing platform, as well as research and development work across music, art, films, storytelling and theatre.
Born from within the creative industries, the vision is not to automate the artform of human creativity. It is to enable the creation of new forms of stories that had not previously been possible, and create new storytellers as a result.
In practice, this means that we’re developing Charismatic.AI to become a powerful technology that helps new and existing writers and producers generate and improve linear and non-linear narratives that are connected to video and soundscape generative systems, and characters with ease. The project upholds the values of curiosity, inclusion and human agency and aims to ensure that diverse, new and existing creators have access to the best opportunities in an era where content and stories are often influenced by a select few.
Using a sociotechnical approach, the project is also conducting research on how AI is impacting creativity and creative communities. We have started with the big picture looking at how it is being regulated around the world and how technology companies are responding. We’re also asking ourselves big questions like Can an industry be responsibly disrupted? and What are the ethics and key principles that should be upheld when we’re using AI to create entertainment? We’re looking ahead and asking ourselves “what could be” and also looking back to understand the history of creative machines and whether C19th innovations could inspire a new metaphor to describe the creative acts and processes of generative AI.
We look forward to sharing it all with you in the next posts. Please subscribe, and share to networks who might want to join the journey.
Next Up: What Governments Think. A review of the world’s major AI Acts.