Conversations on Ethics, AI, & the Future of Creative Work
Zara Shroff ’25 graduated from Santa Clara University with a communications major and a public health minor. Shroff was a 2024-25 Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Views are her own.
AI is now generating ad campaigns, writing movie scripts, and designing logos faster than most of us can think. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Adobe’s Firefly are reshaping the entire creative process. As a senior communication major at Santa Clara University, and I’ve always wanted to work in the creative world. Fashion, media, art direction; these are the spaces I want to live and build in for the rest of my life. But I’ve also been constantly told that those spaces don’t matter
anymore.
That AI is here to take over.
That if you’re not a “techie,” you’re replaceable.
As someone who’s committed to a creative path, I wanted to understand if those messages are true, and if they’re even ethically okay to spread in the first place.
Will AI actually replace creative roles?
And if it does, should it?
Is it ethically sound to imagine a world where every artwork, film, and
product design is created by a machine?
I took these questions to artists, animators, art directors, and designers
—people working at the edge of their fields and thinking seriously
about what AI means for creativity. This guide is a collection of their
perspectives and mine, written not from the top down, but student to
student.
I developed this project as a Hackworth Fellow under the Markkula
Center for Applied Ethics at the Journalism and Media Ethics program
It’s a creative and ethical inquiry into what it means to be a designer, or
any kind of creator, in an AI-saturated world.
I hope it helps you ask better questions, feel less alone, and stand your
ground as a creative in a time that keeps trying to automate imagination.
Zara Shroff
Santa Clara University, Class of 2025