This Emmy-Winning Writer Has An Important Message For Creatives That Fear An AI Takeover – Essence

Artificial intelligence played a role in more than 4,000 job losses by May of last year according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. What’s more, the AI industry is expected to reach $1 trillion+ with the wide touch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI models per a report by Bloomberg Intelligence.

The impact has moved swiftly through all industries, including the creative sector with illustrators, journalists, screen writers and copywriters being left vulnerable to AI replacing them.

Kwame Alexander isn’t much concerned about that.

He’s a literary jack of all trades—a poet, educator, publisher, Emmy® Award-winning producer, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 40 books, including This is the Honey, Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated, the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

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On top of that he is also the Executive producer, showrunner, and writer of the Emmy-award winning series The Crossover, based on his Newbery-Medal winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. The series was picked up by LeBron James’ SpringHill Company and Alexander’s production company Big Sea Entertainment.

His laundry list of accomplishments is attributed not only to his skill, but pure, unfettered “confidence.”

“When The Crossover got published, I was like, ‘yeah, that’s what I expected. ‘When it won the Newbury medal, I was definitely shocked and stunned. But certainly, I felt like I had written a book worthy of winning the Newbery medal. When it got adapted into television, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s where I’m supposed to be. This is the life of this book.’”

He has a reason for this staid self-assuredness.

His parents were both writers. Alexander grew up with a father who had written 16 books, a mother who taught writing, so he grew up in what he called an extremely bookish household.

“My father owned about 11,000 books so at any given time, we I would not only be reading books at bedtime with my mom when we were little, we might be reading historical books as we got older and have to do book reports for my father,” Alexander tells ESSENCE.

Writing and books played instrumental roles in his life, including his happy marriage (he wrote a series of poems for his college sweetheart, now wife) but for many years he loathed literature. It wasn’t until he realized the true power of words did he take his career seriously.

“Writing is pure art,” he says plainly. “And art is created by living, breathing, thinking beings.”

When asked about the impact AI is having on aspiring writers and creatives, Alexander answers candidly.

“Look, I’ll say this—I have an Emmy-winning TV series. I have 41 New York Times best-selling books. I have a line of eyewear. It’s called the Haiku Collection that’s based around some poems that I wrote. I have a new TV show on CBS, a cartoon that’s coming out. It’s called Acoustic Roosters, based on one of my books. I have countless partnerships with various literacy organizations, and I’ve done commercials for Nike, and everything I’ve done has stemmed from poetry. Everything I’ve done has stemmed from figuring out how to convey ideas, thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes through words, through words on a page. I’ll answer your question by saying this. The reason that all this works for me is because ultimately, I am connecting with people. I’m using words to connect with people. The idea of being connected is a means for us to be better human beings to each other, is to create this shared community. When I think of AI, the question is, if we want to utilize AI, is it a replacement for how to create community, or is it a tool for us to utilize to be able to create community? I posit that it’s got to be a tool, that it can’t replace when When you think about art, you can’t have art without art.”

He adds: “You can’t have art without heart. AI cannot replace heart. When I think about AI, how do we utilize it as a tool? How do we utilize it as a tool for young people, for kids, for adults, for writers. So, I’m not about this idea of replacing originality and heart. I’m about using AI as a means, as a supplemental tool to make us better human beings. Let’s not get away from that. And ultimately, that’s what What art is. That’s what poetry is. That’s what I’m about. That’s what every aspect of my business is about, is how do I create more connected people, and how am I more connected with you, and how can we all be better human beings? Does that answer your question?”