ABOUT
"AI will never stop humans being creative, it is in our nature"
In 1993 I pioneered CAD in stage design for some of the biggest bands in the world working for a company that was part of Vari-lite called Brilliant Stages and the late, great Mark Fisher.
At the time, computers promised us "the paperless office" and more free time to enjoy at home. The reality was we could print more paper than ever before, and so the demands got greater to achieve more. Because we could, so we did. And increased productivity became the new normal.
Fast forward to 2025, and as new AI models dropped almost daily, I experienced exactly the same feeling I felt back then, but this time with extreme FOMO. A lot more people are involved in pushing AI than were involved back in the 90s pushing CAD. This was something way bigger, and that made it different. It also made it scary.
It's clear we all have a new kind of risk to face with AI, and it's been sold to us as "the job killer". To some extent it is. However, I believe some things have been misunderstood about how that will manifest.
AI will not make our work-load lighter, it will make us busier and create more work for us, not less. Why? Because we are forced to compete with each other. We wont be replaced by AI, we will be replaced by other humans who know how to use AI better than us.
I think it is important to acknowledge that a lot of livelihoods will be upturned by it, and that is not something to celebrate if we find we are thriving in AI. Today they lose, but tomorrow it will be us. That is the nature of the beast. This isnt a new phenomenon, if you are old enough you have seen this cycle before, just not as globally far-reaching.
Having said that, I believe AI could, and should, become a liberating tool for humanity. But to cope with what, we must adapt and roll with the changes, if we want to survive. There has never been much point in fighting progress, and I've seen the results of that attempt before; in 1980s England with the Miners strikes. In the end, there was no way for them to win that fight either.
But let's not get caught in the downward spiral of doom and fear, and instead let me rewind time a bit further, and permit me talk about my journey, as a creative, to get to this point...
THE CREATIVE JOURNEY DOESNT END
In 1987 I wrote my first musical called "The Search". I quickly realised it would never see the light of day. So, I spent the next 30 years trying to become a rock star instead. It didn't work out as planned. But I made a lot of music and you can find that on markdkberry.bandcamp.com
In 2018 I parked making music to try my hand at writing. Unsurprisingly, that didn't work out as planned either. But I wrote a few books and you can find them on amazon or my online store where you can find a bunch of other stuff too.
Then in 2023, I realised AI was going to revolutionize the movie making industry, so I started looking into it. I was a bit early, but that was okay. And you can see most of what I made during that period on Rumble and some less SFW on Vimeo and the totally SFW on YouTube.
As we rolled on toward the end of 2024, a curious conjunction occured - AI magically brought everything to my door, all at once. It unexpectedly provided a crucible in which to blend all my creative outlets. That had never happened before.
On December 5th 2024 an AI model appeared in the open source community that blew everyone's mind - it was a Hunyuan model and it gave us a way to make video clips that looked real. It was incredible.
As soon as I had a go with it, I knew I had finally found the instrument that would allow me to create all the things I had always wanted to create, but not been able to until now. Best of all, it was free and ran on a local GPU.
Music, story, visual creativity, and delivery of the spoken word all wrapped into one. I could finally make everything! It was overwhelming, and stayed that way throughout 2025 as models evolved and improved. July to September was "insane".
It was also strange to discover, at such a late stage of my life, the creative ability to achieve what I thought would always be out of my reach. I'd buried the 1987 ideas for so long, that I'd long since given up on them and laid them to rest.
I now wished I had gone to Film School. I did think about it back in 1996 after deciding to get out of CAD, but I was already acknowledging that my creativity was going to need to become a hobby, since it wasnt much of an income source, so I chose I.T. instead.
And so for me, 2025 is where the journey begins, or maybe more accurately, starts over.
SO WHERE NEXT?
I've been researching for over a year waiting for AI to improve to the point we can actually make believable narratives with dialogue-driven story, at home on our GPUs, for free. We are getting close. Will it be believable though? I have no idea, I never went to Film School, but I intend to find out.
AI is in the process of revolutionising the media industry, and before long, I believe, it is going to transcend the "slop" and lead toward some impressive story-telling. Maybe that will be your legacy. Mine, I hope, will be to get the ball rolling.
The best way to summarise what I think is coming, would be to say, I suspect we are headed toward the "democratization of story-telling". And to that end, either this year or before the end of the next, I intend to try to make a movie using AI. Possibly, even, several of them.
If you are reading this in 2026, and that idea gets you as excited as it gets me, then welcome aboard!
- Mark, January 2026.
Want to know more? Join my Patreon Patreon (free tier) to be kept up to date.