Where do new ideas come from? Are they happy accidents, divine intervention or just our past and our experiences coming together? Certainly, creative artificial intelligence (AI) is mixing together large data sets in fascinating ways to fuel new ideas - and in schools, we need to consider how we might benefit from this new tool.

Over the past year creative AI tools have changed hugely. The start of my journey using AI was using Vizcom’s Sketch to Render tool in August 2021: you can use it to render a sketch in under 30 seconds, whether digitally or by using paper and uploading an image.

My first attempts with learners’ work were using a mix of pencil and pen drawings. When S1 students watched the process of uploading the image and then the AI rendering it in seconds, they were amazed. I then tried the AI with images from my senior class and got even better results.

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There are now a range of different rendering tools, encompassing, for example, real-time rendering as you draw on a tablet, and conversion of 2D drawings to look like a 3D image.

Midjourney is an AI tool that can create images from just text-based input. So my first attempt was to give the prompt “Scottish samurai sitting on a turtle with a can of Irn-Bru”. I initially thought this would push the AI to the extreme but it came back with this image:

That’s pretty good for 30 seconds - not perfect but, as a prompt for a pupil’s work to continue, it would work very well. The next input that I prompted the AI with was “The Starry Night by Van Gogh in the style of Banksy”. The Image I got back was of much greater detail and followed the prompt very well.

I then tried putting in some of the briefs from previous assessments at National 5 level and got some very good responses from the AI that would meet the marking scheme in terms of showing a diverse range of ideas and creativity. In little time, students could very quickly produce hundreds of completely different initial ideas.

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But how can we tell if a learner has used these tools? If, for example, a student just reuses the AI image much the same as a student draws someone else’s work, you may be able to tell by the style and quality of the image and your knowledge of the learner. 

When a student uses AI to generate a concept then reproduces the drawing, the only way to know would be asking them to explain the story of where the idea came from. This is less than foolproof because articulating the seed of an idea and sometimes remembering where it originated can be extremely challenging. I cannot pin down, for example, where the Scottish samurai sitting on a turtle with a can of juice actually came from.

A colleague did ask if we could, like universities, use a tool to scan work for plagiarism. However, the only way to have a system to catch plagiarism would be to have a constantly updating database of all the output data from all AI platforms to compare against - unrealistic and virtually impossible when you can run your own AI using platforms such as Google Colab. 

I believe, then, that the solution is responsible teaching and creating digitally literate students in the context of AI.

It would be remiss not to point out the elephant in the room. The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) specifically awards marks for creativity and producing a diverse range of ideas in response to a brief. With Midjourney, I demonstrated that you could gain these marks by using AI. In an open-book assessment where students can use tools to support, a student could use the AI at home and just come in and reproduce the ideas and a teacher would never know.

We do not want to be at a point (arguably where we are just now) where a student who is aware of such AI tools can use them to their advantage and others who are ignorant of them cannot. The SQA should be supporting all teachers and learners to understand how these real-world developments are changing and having an impact on our courses.

But what should teachers be doing? First, you need to do some professional development yourself to get up to speed. Play and experiment with the AI - like with any new tool in the classroom, you need confidence before jumping in to share it with your class. 

And do not make it tokenistic or gimmicky. Identify the project or topic that AI can support or enrich. Then explain how it can support the learners, model it and allow practice and experimentation time. See the new AI tool as an opportunity to discuss openly and honestly with your learners. Encourage them to share when they have or have not used the tool. Introducing AI in this way will stop it becoming a secret or a taboo subject.

Thinking back a year, the change in the technology has been gargantuan. I did not dream or think that I would say in 2022 that AI could really produce the majority of a creative design folio for me. After I first submitted this article, I had to quickly update it - one of the AI tools mentioned in it has brought out an update allowing a student to, with a text input, turn a 2D profile into a 3D rendered image. 

And I believe such AI tools will become easier to access very soon. With assessment, I hope that we move with the times and do not try to ban AI tools but embrace them. My experience is that qualifications bodies are slow-moving tankers, but I hold out hope that the national agency replacing the SQA in 2024 will keep up with the times.

I hope people tag me on Twitter and share their creative AI stories, that they get in touch and ask me questions. I have become fascinated by how AI can support learning and teaching - and I have probably not even scratched the surface.

Andrew Hay is principal teacher of technologies at Newbattle High School, in Midlothian. He tweets @CDTMrHay