AI can help a TON
As someone who was told in school repeatedly that they aren’t creative, and who thus never worked on developing those skills, I have found that the current crop of AI tools are amazingly helpful. Just last week I wrote my first song, for example. I wrote about that process in Bards! You can use AI to make songs easily — that’s worth checking out as the process is very easy.
I’ve also been using AI to create monsters, including their pictures. The current crop of image generators aren’t perfect but they certainly do good enough, especially if you’re willing to put in the effort to simply ask “make it better” a handful of times. For another example, an 11 year old girl made this picture of her Tabaxi Druid using ChatGPT by using a simple prompt and asking it about a dozen times to improve it. Most of those were simply “make it cuter”.
I also use it to create stat blocks for monsters as well as helping me flesh out descriptions for anything. You can ask it to give a creepy description of a cave or room in a building and it will give you some great text. Sure, a professional writer specializing in that genre might do a better job, but most players will be delighted to hear you describe the next encounter.
At this point the AI tools can’t be trusted to give scientifically correct and accurate calculations, but for artistic output they are amazing.
But they have also pointed out that it is not the case that I am not creative. It’s just that I have never before had the skills to implement my ideas. But now I can play around with my ideas quickly and very inexpensively, leading to a lot more experimentation, which allows me to increase the amount of art I put into my endeavors. For example, that song I wrote and can now play was a one-off just for one session. Imagine that, being able to create a song on the fly for your bard to play.
Just yesterday in my How to DM class an 11 year old boy who was practicing his DMing skills had to pivot quickly when we creatively destroyed his monster. So he created a pig dragon hybrid. Using ChatGPT he was able to make a picture of it in a couple minutes, then had it generate the stat block. Using it to improvise in your games is tremendously helpful.
So go ahead and embrace AI. Use it to enhance your game. You’ll find ways to use it that fit your style, and your fellow players will love it.