Situating LLMs for Creatives: Philosophy, Workflows, and Political Economy

A practical, philosophical, and politically grounded guide to how creatives should use AI without surrendering the human parts of creative work. This article explains what large language models really are, why they are not “intelligent” in the human sense, where AI tools help with automation, research, coding, file handling, and analytics, and where they still fail at novelty, judgment, meaning, and strategy. It also explores generative AI through the lens of labor, value, and creative work, arguing that the real threat is less aesthetic than economic. For marketers, editors, designers, producers, and other digital creatives trying to decide whether AI belongs in their workflow, this piece offers a clear answer: let the computer do the computer things, and protect the human work that only humans can do.