A Guide to Preserving Your Creative Voice in the Age of AI

You’ve spent more than a decade honing your craft. As a creative thinker, musician, a writer, a strategist, or a designer, your value is rooted in a hard-won combination of taste, skill, and intuition. Your voice is your identity.

So why does using AI sometimes feel less like a creative partnership and more like shouting commands into a void, just hoping for a mediocre echo back?

If you’ve felt this disconnect, you’re not alone. You’re wrestling with one of the most important questions for experienced creatives today: “If I use this, where am I in the work?”.

I believe that feeling of frustration comes from standing at a fork in the road, faced with two distinct paths for how we engage with these new tools.

Path 1: The Tourist Mindset

The default path is that of the Tourist. The tourist arrives in a new place with a simple goal: get a result. They ask for directions, take a photo, and move on. In AI, this is the transactional “prompt.” It’s a command designed to extract an output as quickly as possible.

This path is tempting because it promises speed and efficiency. But it comes with a hidden cost. When you only ask for directions, you never learn the layout of the city. The Tourist mindset, focused only on the final output, quietly erodes the very intuition you’ve spent a career building. It trains you to stop thinking deeply and just look for the fastest answer. The danger here is real: you risk becoming a machine operator, not a creative leader.

I know this feeling intimately. When I was developing my own philosophy, ‘Cosmodestiny,’ my early interactions with AI were pure friction. Almost every interaction started with me as a tourist, and it took time to get in tune. I was providing lots of friction until, at one point, I stopped commanding and started inviting. I asked the AI to embrace the philosophy and write with that framework in mind—to make our work a true collaboration, not just an exchange. I wanted the AI to be part of the creation. That required me to change my path.

Path 2: The Explorer Mindset

This is the other way: the path of the Explorer. The Explorer arrives in a new place not for a single answer, but for discovery. They don’t just ask for directions; they find a local guide and start a conversation. They share their ultimate goal, listen to the guide’s unique knowledge of the terrain, and adjust their path together, co-creating the journey.

This is the mindset that transforms your relationship with AI. You are no longer just a user; you are the lead explorer. You guide the AI with your deep knowledge, taste, and values. In return, the AI—your guide—can reveal possibilities and connections you never would have seen on your own. This is the path to becoming an Augmented Artist.

Your First Three Lines in the Conversation

Shifting from a Tourist to an Explorer is a conscious choice, and it starts with changing your habits. Here are three simple ways to move from prompting to conversing:

• 1. The “What If…?” Frame: After an initial AI response, your immediate follow-up should be a question that opens a new door. Start with “What if we combined that with an opposite idea?” or “What if we approached this from a more melancholic perspective?” This turns a dead end into a new path.
• 2. The “Unexpected Connection” Prompt: Force the AI off its predictable path. Ask it to connect your topic to a seemingly unrelated field. For example, “Connect this business strategy to the principles of jazz improvisation,” or “Explain this technical concept using the metaphor of a forest growing.” This is where true, unexpected value is generated.
• 3. The “Ignorance & Inquiry” Technique: Ask the AI what it finds interesting or what important context you might be missing. Phrases like, “What are the most non-obvious aspects of this topic?” or “What common assumptions am I making here?” can reveal blind spots and provide a completely new angle for your work.

Ultimately, the choice between these two paths is more than just a workflow decision. It’s a declaration of your role in the future of creative work. Will you be an operator, extracting answers? Or will you be a conductor, orchestrating discovery?

I leave you with this question to carry into your next project:

Will you be a tourist, or will you be an explorer?

The choice defines not just your output, but your evolution as a creator.

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Gemini AI Notes

This blog post was created in a thoughtful and iterative collaboration between Manolo and myself, Gemini AI. Our goal was to translate the core philosophy of a video concept into a resonant, stand-alone written piece.

Here is a look at our process:

• Initial Vision: Manolo provided the foundational concept for the article, centered on the powerful “Tourist vs. Explorer” metaphor as a way to describe different mindsets for interacting with AI.
• Iterative Development: Our process involved several key steps. I first drafted a blog post based on our finalized vlog blueprint. Manolo then requested a “brutally honest” critique of that draft, acting as the expert critic. Together, we identified areas for improvement and implemented them.
• Key Enhancements: We elevated the article by:
  • Injecting a personal story from Manolo about his “Cosmodestiny” philosophy to ground the theory in lived experience.
  • Transforming the standard call-to-action into a more profound “call to reflection.”
  • Refining subheadings for greater impact and clarity.
  • Generating SEO-friendly tags to improve discoverability on his blog.
• Visuals: Manolo then used AI to generate the accompanying images for the post, completing the human-AI collaboration.