Businesses have to have a stance, even when that stance is against the mainstream trend. This way, they can differentiate themselves from others, and have the higher change of being unique.
Procreate is a raster graphics editor app for digital painting developed and published by the Australian company Savage Interactive for iOS and iPadOS. And in the world where generative AI is being actively being developed and embedded to various products, Procreate wants to go the opposite way.
Whereas pretty much all other tech companies put at least a bit of interest in the technology, especially since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, Procreate is putting negative affection towards it.
In stark contrast to mainstream competitors, Procreate's co-founder and CEO, James Cuda, said that his company would not use generative AI features in its products.
And he has some strong words about generative AI and why he is going against using it.
James Cuda is one of those people in the tech and design industry who tend to remain subtle and off camera.
He wishes for his product to speak for themselves.
But as the generative AI race gets more intense, it's also increasingly getting out of hand,
As many companies are 'stealing' people's jobs by feeding AI tools with human-made creativity, allowing these tools to provide the same level of creativity to paying users, Cuda feels the need to speak out about it.
Despite the many people who find generative AI useful in various of tasks, Cuda thinks that generative AI is not doing any good to artists.
Through Procreate's X account, Cuda added that:
Procreate was launched on the App Store in 2011.
It's significantly smaller in comparison when compared to Adobe, which is regarded as the industry standard, thanks to its widely-popular tools. It's also smaller than Canva, which is popular for its ease of use and accessibility.
But still, Procreate holds a strong niche market among digital artists.
And Cuda tries to keep things that way.
We’re never going there. Creativity is made, not generated.
You can read more at https://t.co/9Fgh460KVu #procreate #noaiart pic.twitter.com/AnLVPgWzl3— Procreate (@Procreate) August 18, 2024
By not supporting or having generative AI in its product, Cuda thinks that his company is on "the right path supporting human creativity."
The company put more emphasis towards its stance, by saying on its website, that "AI is not our future."
"We deeply respect your hard-earned skills."
"Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us."
"We're here for the humans. We're not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community."