I do not believe that AI (specifically Generative AI right now) can or should ever replace creatives, no matter how advanced or ethical it becomes.
However, that belief alone isn’t going to get much done. More and more, there are companies out there looking to push AI to its limits, and use it to cut down on time and money as much as possible.
That in itself doesn’t have to be an issue—but when AI usage starts encroaching on job security, copyright, workloads, and environmental health, things change. Even more so when it’s been trained on stolen artwork.
This is why I spend time with companies working on or with AI, pushing for regulations, and talk to other creatives about it.
I find people who are trying to use AI for genuinely helpful, ethical things—and help them expand its useful applications in a way that respects and protects the creatives every company and artwork alike relies on.
That means hiring human creatives doing human work (like me) whenever possible. It means ensuring no user is farmed for data or training input.
It means stopping AI being seen as a “replacement employee”, and treated like the fallible tool that it is. We can use it, sure, but we need to understand what using it means for our work and the world.
It means creating a product and workflow that shows what AI could be, if people stopped treating it like the perfect ethical substitute for human creatives.
AI is a technology that exists right now. As professional creatives, we can’t hide from that: its development will continue with or without out input. So we should make sure we have our say.
It’s only when we understand and get involved in AI conversations that we can make sure our voices are saying the right things to the right people at the right times. We need to advocate for the laws, protections, and directions that will prevent AI continuing to leech off of the skills we spent a lifetime honing, and the planet we spent a lifetime living on.
There are a lot of other people in this conversation praying we keep our noses out, boycott anything to do with AI, and let them develop AI systems at our expense.
We shouldn’t give them the satisfaction, nor the chance.