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As technological innovations take hold across various industries, educators are often tasked with preparing students to enter a new and unfamiliar world.
Associate Professor of Media Studies Cary Elza is taking this plunge, working to prepare her students to adapt to these innovations and stand out from the pack instead of fearing the unknown. This semester a new topic under the MSTU 354 course was piloted by Elza, “Topics in Media Production: Artificial Intelligence and Creativity.”
Understanding generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications can be daunting. With headlines of AI imaging used in Oscar-nominated films, and Hollywood strikes centered around the use of AI in writers’ rooms, concerns about authenticity and job security continue to rise in creative fields. Even so, Elza is optimistic about the need for human authenticity in media, while remaining cautious about how AI is changing the media production landscape.
“Media creators are at the front lines of this,” she said. “Many of our students go on to create, and I don’t think that these tools can replace their role as producers. However, being able to use AI tools and explain how and why you use them for individual creation and expression is becoming increasingly important.”
In this course, she is laying groundwork by teaching the history of this technology to prepare students for the future of AI in media careers. Elza has developed four learning outcomes for this course, including defining the parameters of generative AI, examining the nature of human creativity and its relation to technological augmentation, critiquing contemporary uses of AI tools and working to integrate these tools in creative workflows.
“We are aiming to help students figure out where technological augmentation happens, and how to do so while maintaining authentic voice,” Elza said.
Discerning AI generated images and text from the manufactured has become increasingly difficult for the public, leading to concerns of authenticity in creative professions. But what if there was a way to utilize generative AI that retains human quality and makes creative media services more accessible? By cultivating a local partnership and offering creative services, Elza hopes students benefit from gaining hands on experience alongside the Stevens Point community.
“I am working on a partnership with the Green Circle Trail to create an advertising campaign for safe and responsible behavior,” she said. “My goal is that by the end of the semester we’ll have used AI to help them create a whole safety campaign complete with videos and animation.”
Although this course is a new media studies offering, Elza has an extensive background in AI and media, specifically the portrayal of technology in film and television. With published works on the feminization of robots and experience teaching courses on apocalypse cinema, she too was a skeptic of emerging generative AI tools.
What Elza and other media critics once considered an idea of “end times” speculative fiction has now become a reality. She reminds us that we can either shy away from a changing world or learn to embrace the unknown.
“It can be terrifying– I too have reservations, but changes in media technology have happened before,” Elza said. “By participating in what comes next, you are envisioning the way the world could be instead of the way it was. The people who will be able to get the jobs of the future are the people who embrace the future.”
In addition to her work as a historian and critic of media and technology, she has been examining this intersection in academia since the beginning of the summer of 2024. Elza is working on a Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars research project focused on AI and teaching, specifically what constitutes the human voice in writing. She will present their findings at the OPID Spring Conference for Wisconsin Educators in April.
Elza is a part of the growing community of UW-Stevens Point faculty and staff committed to understanding the impact of technological innovation in higher education. Visit our Innovations in Technology Series archive to learn more.