Write at least 250 words · 40 minutes
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Ideas to get you started
- Machines can imitate patterns but may lack lived experience
- Audiences often value the human story behind a work
- AI may become a tool that changes, rather than replaces, creative roles
A plan for this question
- Introduction: paraphrase the claim and give your position: you largely disagree, because creative work depends on human experience and the human connection with the audience.
- Body 1: what AI can already do, and admit that some routine creative jobs may disappear; explain that AI copies patterns from existing work.
- Body 2: why original work stays human: lived experience, audiences caring about the artist; AI as a tool, like the camera or the computer.
- Conclusion: AI will change creative jobs more than replace them.
Model essay
297 words
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led some people to predict that machines will soon write, design and compose as well as humans do. Although AI is already remarkably capable, I largely disagree with this view, because creative work depends on human experience and on the connection between the artist and the audience.
It is true that AI can produce impressive results. Programs can now write a story in seconds, create a logo in any style or compose background music for a video. For routine tasks, such as product descriptions or simple advertising images, these tools may well be good enough, and some jobs of this kind are likely to disappear. However, this is mainly because the tools learn from patterns in huge amounts of existing human work. They are excellent at producing something that resembles what has been done before.
Truly original creative work is different. A novel about grief or a song about leaving home moves people because it comes from someone who has lived through those experiences. Audiences also care about the person behind the work: people queue to see a favourite singer perform, read interviews with authors and visit galleries to see an artist’s own brushstrokes. A piece produced by a machine, however polished, lacks this human story. In my view, the more likely future is that AI becomes a powerful tool, as cameras and computers did before it, helping writers to research, designers to try ideas quickly and musicians to experiment with sound, while the creative decisions remain human.
In conclusion, while AI will take over some routine creative tasks, I do not believe it will match human writers, designers and musicians in the work that matters most to audiences. It is more likely to change these professions than to replace them.
Written by Acedmi to show what a high-band essay looks like. It is not an official IELTS sample, and your own ideas can be different.
Useful vocabulary
- artificial intelligence (AI)
- Computer systems that can do tasks that usually need human thinking.
- “Artificial intelligence can now write simple stories.”
- remarkably capable
- Surprisingly good at doing things.
- “Today’s AI tools are remarkably capable.”
- routine tasks
- Ordinary jobs done in the same way each time.
- “AI is good at routine tasks such as product descriptions.”
- resemble
- Look or seem like something.
- “AI produces work that resembles what already exists.”
- original
- New and not copied.
- “Original art comes from personal experience.”
- lived experience
- Knowledge that comes from living through something.
- “Great songs often come from lived experience.”
- take over
- Start doing a job that someone else did.
- “Machines may take over some design work.”
- polished
- Finished to a high standard.
- “The AI image looked polished but empty.”
Common mistakes
- Writing about AI in general, such as self-driving cars or medicine. Keep to writers, designers and musicians.
- Stating predictions as facts: "AI will destroy every job". Use "is likely to", "may well", "I believe".
- Agreeing in the introduction and disagreeing in the body. Decide your position before you start writing.
What the examiner marks
Four criteria, equally weighted: Task Response (answer every part of the question with a clear position), Coherence and Cohesion (logical paragraphs and linking), Lexical Resource (range and accuracy of vocabulary) and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. An essay under 250 words loses marks for Task Response.