The Starving Artist vs the GenAI Glutton

Visual AI tools don’t make art — humans do, no talent required.

It’s been awhile since I published on Medium — or anywhere! No, I wasn’t replaced by AI, as much as unscrupulous business owners and ultra-capitalist techbros would love for human creators to go away.

At risk of sounding like a Luddite, I’m sick of having AI shoved down my throat. Every app I use trumpets their “AI-powered” whatzit to make my life easier. While most of these bells and whistles do little more than offend me with obnoxious pop-ups, their presence feels more ominous when they inundate my creative tools.

Opening my writing and design apps only to see an overly confident offer to “bring my vision to life” doesn’t feel like benevolence. It feels like a threat at best: a reminder that creativity has been commodified. A subtle hint that whatever my skill level, my craft is considered old-fashioned and replaceable. Generative AI, or genAI for short, has swooped in with slick (literally) unearned confidence.

Of course, true creativity is never replaceable. It is intangible, transient, and completely unique to the creator. So while the deep pockets funding generative AI think art can come from the push of a button — and creative professionals need not trust in their job security — they’re…