AI for Creative Production: A handbook for the ethical use of AI in creating and processing text, images, video, and audio

by Iain Anderson

Worried AI might replace your creativity? In this practical guide, Apple Certified Trainer Iain Anderson shows how to use AI as a powerful tool, not your replacement, across video, audio, text, and images.

Free with your DRM-free PDF version + access to Packt's next-gen Reader*

Key Features

Master AI-powered workflows for editing video, enhancing audio, and improving text and imagesUse AI automation to speed up production and cut repetitive creative tasksStrengthen your creativity while navigating ethics and copyright with confidencesBook Description

AI for Creative Production is a practical guide for digital creators, filmmakers, musicians, and writers who want to use AI without losing their own voice.

You will begin with a clear explanation of how modern AI works and the ethical questions that come with it. This book cuts through the noise to show what is genuinely useful and what is not. It groups AI into three clear areas. With Utility AI, you will explore tools that organize large libraries, pick out your best shots, select subjects without endless masking, transcribe and search hours of video in seconds, clean noisy audio, and summarize text.

You will then look at Generative AI and how to create text, images, video, and audio while keeping creative control. You will learn practical prompting, smarter retouching, and new ways to brainstorm that support your workflow.

Finally, Automation AI focuses on speeding up editing, processing photos, building scripts, and handling repetitive tasks so you can focus on the creative decisions that matter.

Using tools such as Firefly, Runway, Sora, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and ElevenLabs, this book shows how to bring AI into your practice thoughtfully and confidently.

By the end, you will know when to use AI, when to set it aside, and how to combine it with your own expertise to produce work that still feels like yours.

What you will learn

Understand modern AI foundations and ethicsOrganize, classify, and improve media with smart toolsEnhance images, video, and audio using practical AI techniquesSummarize, rewrite, and translate text effectivelyGenerate new text, images, video, and audioAutomate workflows with assistants and scriptsLearn to decide where AI adds value and where it doesn’tBalance efficiency, originality, and professional responsibilityWho this book is for

This book is for creative professionals and serious enthusiasts, including photographers, video editors, writers, and digital creators who want to understand how AI fits into their work. You should already be comfortable with digital tools in at least one medium and be ready to experiment thoughtfully. Whether you want to work faster, explore generative tools, or make sense of the ethical questions surrounding AI, this book offers practical guidance grounded in real workflows.

Table of Contents

The AI Story So FarEthical Implications of AI UseUtility AI with AudioUtility AI with Images and VideoUtility AI with TextGenerative AI with TextGenerative AI with ImagesGenerative AI with VideoGenerative AI with AudioAutomation AI with ImagesAutomation AI with VideoAutomation AI with Digital Assistants and Agents*Email sign-up and proof of purchase required

382 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2026

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has tested a stunning number of AI tools that can be used for creative work with text, images, audio, and video. He tells about his results, sharing what works and what doesn't (yet), and gives advice. There are many screenshots and other images.

The details about AI tools will become quickly outdated, but the advice about deciding what work a human should do and what work to use AI for will be useful for longer.

The author puts AI tools into 3 categories:
• Utility AI: used for recognition, classification, understanding
• Generative AI: used for creation of text, images, audio, video, etc.
• Automation AI: used to perform tasks

Quotes

AI systems often encourage us to think of tasks at a high level, like a CEO. If a CEO wants a task completed, they ask their staff to do it, and the CEO doesn’t worry about the details. But somewhere down the line, those staff do make a whole lot of tiny, informed decisions on the CEO’s behalf, and those decisions matter. If nobody sweats the details, such as when an AI falls back to a default setting, the overall product can suffer.

Often, the job of a creative is to dive deep into the details, interrogating each decision and analyzing its consequences. What if that pause is held a little longer, or that title made a little larger, or that word just a shade more grandiloquent? These changes matter, maybe not in ways that are immediately obvious at the highest level, but they sum to a greater whole.

Another issue is that if you can suddenly make anything (at a lower quality setting), then you’re entirely free from constraints… but constraints inspire creativity. A blank page is easier to fill if you have a 300-word limit; a one-page flyer is easier to complete with a style guide in hand. An endless supply of low-grade imagery doesn’t help focus a vision.

If we’re not careful, extensive use of AI could bring a generation of people who create without enjoying creating. If you only prompt rather than make, chasing ROI instead of beauty, your work will be lacking. It’s not a bad thing to bring the power of creation to those who have great ideas, but AI alone isn’t the way to make the best work.

In more sinister ways, AI could shrink the pool of expert creatives, as fewer people grow their skills by using them. Creative muscles must be exercised, and prompting for results is like taking a taxi rather than walking.

Avoiding tedium is fine, but don’t let your skills atrophy by passing every job to AI tools. AI is fantastic as an assistant and an idea factory, or to help with specific elements of a task, but replacing humans will lead to worse creative output.