Cole: AI Has Woven Itself Into Every Layer of My Creative Process (AI & Technology Influencer, 217K Followers, United States)

Cole Interview

 

"I wish someone had told me earlier that the technical skills are just the foundation. What really matters is developing your perspective on why the work matters. "

Q. You've been deeply involved in hackathons, AI, and tech—how did that path eventually lead you into content creation and sharing your work online?

I discovered I loved making videos while filming a hackathon video.

As Director of Creative Experiences at Stanford XR, Stanford University’s augmented reality and virtual reality club, I wanted to create our first-ever promotional film for our annual hackathon. 

Delving headfirst into visual effects without any background knowledge, I felt a compulsion to learn everything I could, to master this new language of storytelling.

I've always been drawn to cyberpunk aesthetics, this intersection of technology and humanity, and suddenly, I had found the medium that could bring those visions to life. 

It became less about the tools themselves and more about bridging this vast gap I kept seeing between the incredible complexity of what we're building in tech, and the people who might benefit from understanding it but find it completely inaccessible.

Q. How do you integrate AI tools into your editing or creative workflows? Any favorite AI innovations that you can't work without?

It's fascinating how AI has woven itself into every layer of my creative process. Adobe's generative fill is my favourite tool. It’s there whenever I need to clean up a shot, something that could have required hours of painstaking manual work. 

Kling helps me animate sequences that existed in my imagination. I've been exploring this Higgsfield to place myself in spaces that don't exist. I find myself using Claude and ChatGPT not just for scripting, but for thinking through ideas and having conversations with concepts before they fully form. 

Using Perplexity has become having access to a research partner that never gets tired.

Yet I've become increasingly protective of the human elements in my work. The actual reporting, the synthesis of multiple sources, the conversations with real people, these feel more precious now, not less. 

There's something irreplaceable about human intuition in storytelling, about knowing which thread to pull and which story needs to be told. AI can accelerate the technical aspects, but it can't replace that moment when you suddenly understand why a story matters.

Q. Hackathons are all about solving problems under pressure. What's your process for staying calm and innovative during crunch time?

There's this almost transcendent quality to being in a room full of people who are all there for the same purpose, to create something that didn't exist before. I've found that the pressure stops feeling crushing when it becomes shared. 

It transforms into this collective energy that's actually quite grounding.

What I've learned about myself is that my creativity thrives when I can completely trust in the people around me. When everyone understands that we're building together, not competing, the stress becomes productive rather than paralysing.

The mindset shift that's been most important for me is accepting that there's always a workaround. Not in a casual way, but as a fundamental truth about problem-solving. 

When you hit a wall, panicking assumes there's only one path forward. But innovation lives in those moments when you're forced to think laterally, to approach the challenge from an angle you hadn't considered before.

Q. In your view, will AI be humanity's servant or master—will it help humans thrive or lead to their downfall? And what future innovations in AI excite you the most?

This question haunts me, honestly. I find myself oscillating between hope and concern, sometimes within the same day. What's become clear to me is that AI isn't inherently good or evil. It's amplifying human choices and values at a scale we've never seen before.

The environmental implications keep me up at night. We're constructing these massive data centres that consume resources on a scale that feels almost incomprehensible. 

When I research what's happening in places like the Congo, where water and land are already scarce, I see how our technological progress might be creating suffering in places we don't often think about. There's something deeply unsettling about that disconnect.

I'm also watching how AI is changing the way we learn and think. When you can get instant answers to any question, there's less incentive to engage in that slower, more painful process of actually understanding something deeply. 

I worry we're creating a generation that knows how to ask questions but has never learned to sit with uncertainty or struggle through complexity.

And then there's the representation issue. AI systems trained on biased data are now creating media that could shape how people see themselves and others. We're essentially encoding our worst tendencies into systems that will influence culture for decades.

But then I see the other side, and it fills me with hope. AI is democratising creativity in ways that feel revolutionary. People who never had access to professional tools can now create things that would have required entire teams just a few years ago. 

In research, we're seeing breakthroughs in medicine, climate science, and materials discovery that could solve problems that have plagued humanity for generations.

The question for humanity now is: how do we guide this amplification toward our highest aspirations rather than our worst impulses?

Q. For someone looking to start in both AI development and editing, what's one piece of advice you wish you'd known earlier?

I wish someone had told me earlier that the technical skills are just the foundation. What really matters is developing your perspective on why the work matters. 

I spent so much time in the beginning obsessing over mastering every tool, every technique, thinking that technical perfection was the goal. But the real breakthrough came when I started asking deeper questions: What stories am I uniquely positioned to tell? What perspective can I bring that doesn't exist yet?

The intersection of AI and creative work is still so new that there aren't established rules or paths. That can feel intimidating, but it's actually liberating. You don't need to follow someone else's blueprint, you can create your own. The people who will thrive in this space are those who can see connections others miss.

Bio

Cole (known online as @covacut) is a creator at the cutting edge of technology and storytelling. With roots in hackathons and AI research, she discovered her passion for filmmaking while producing a promotional video for Stanford XR’s annual hackathon, where she served as Director of Creative Experiences. 

Her work blends cyberpunk aesthetics with a drive to make complex technologies more accessible, using AI-powered tools like Adobe’s generative fill, Kling, and Higgsfield to bring imagined worlds to life. 

Cole believes AI should amplify human intuition rather than replace it, and her storytelling explores the tension between technological progress and its human, cultural, and environmental impact.

Follow Cole on Instagram

Interviewed By Irene Elina Eldhose