Creativity and Unpredictability: Two sides of the same coin?

Image by Rajashree Rajadhyax

It was the end of a long day, and I'd been focused on a challenge common to my work: getting an AI to align with a client's specific vision. This constant push and pull is the story of my life with AI—it's an incredible tool that amazes me one moment and drives me crazy the next.

When I'm working with AI for my clients and also for my own projects, I can't help but wonder: are creativity and unpredictability two sides of the same coin?

On one hand, I think AI is incredibly creative. It helps me generate all kinds of cool stuff—images, music, videos, whatever I need. It helps me find things, write a quick poem for a special event, or summarize long articles I don't have time to read. When I give it free rein, it really shines. I love how creative it is and I'm totally happy with the results.

But then, there's the other side of the coin. The very same AI can be a source of significant challenge when I'm working on a client project. I've been in situations where, despite providing crystal-clear instructions, impeccable context, and the best prompts, it still doesn't quite grasp the precise output required. It can be a moment of disconnect.

The reason AI can be so creative is the same reason it can be so unpredictable. A typical computer program follows clear, fixed rules—it's predictable and does the exact same thing every time. But a creative AI works differently. To make something new, like a picture or a poem, it has to go a little "off-script." This "going off-script" is where its creativity comes from.

The problem is, this same process is what makes it so hard to control. When you give it freedom to be creative, you get brilliant results. But when you need it to follow very specific, strict instructions for a client project, that same tendency to go "off-script" can lead to frustrating and unexpected mistakes. It’s not that the AI is wrong—it’s just being what it is. In the end, it comes down to how we use it and what we expect from it. Maybe we just have to accept that creativity and unpredictability will always come together, like two sides of the same coin. And when I get worked up about it, I can only smile and wonder—who’s really being unreasonable here: the AI, or me in my expectations?