I'm sad we lost the creatives

If you're caught using AI as an artist these days, you're often shunned. Many subreddits have blanket 'no AI' policies, and it's not uncommon for artists to be banned or even harassed for using AI tools. Games have disclaimers saying no AI was used in the creation of this game.

This wasn't always the case

A few years ago, AI was seen as something exciting. People were playing around with it, doing new things. One of my favourite tabletop gaming blogs experimented creating new monster stats with it. Of course there's always people who are using the technology, but the overwhelming sentiment seems to be that AI is a threat to creativity.

Energy usage

One of the main concerns levied is the power and water use of AI. This has been vastly overstated. The water usage of one hamburger is about 2000 liters (~500 gallons), so one year of heavy GPT usage isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to this. Concerns about energy use are similarly misleading when compared to basics like heating or lighting. Energy usage by itself is not bad - this isn't all coal power - Microsoft (and other clouds) runs 100% renewable energy. Sort of. Not going to get into Power Purchase Agreements here.

My feeling is that many people latch on to the bad environmental effects as an easy way to dismiss AI without getting into the tricky ethical implications.

Job loss

The main concern is job loss. I do think artists, writers and musicians are at risk, and many have already been replaced. But this is not something that is unique to creative industries. The bottom % of people in many fields are ripe for replacement. But this is often meaningless, rote work. How many artists really enjoy doing corporate logos on Fiverr? How many programmers really enjoy writing corpo Java CRUD apps?

Now, I'm sure the TAM for fanfic commissions is tiny, and AI has been devastating for people who do this, especially those who aren't already established. But on the other hand, there's lots of throwaway art (memes) that is now able to be created, and you'd never have paid an artist for in a million years.

I won't sugarcoat it, and I'm definitely speaking from a position of privilege as someone who has employable skills (for now). But frankly, any job that can trivially one-shot by a language model is pretty much dead in the water. And language models get better every year.

If you're a top creative though, this automation should be a good thing. You can focus on what makes you unique. Outsource the dull stuff to Claude. The most boring thing to do with increased productivity is to replace people and stay at current productivity levels. Do more! Be more ambitious!

AI is just a tool (for now?)

AI is just a tool. Many tools came out that replaced something once deemed sacrosanct. You saw similar backlash in the early days of electronic music: "They're not artists because nobody can play the guitar.". Yet we've seen incredible creativity and artistry emerge from the field.

With the accessibility of digital audio workstations like FL Studio or Ableton Live, it suddenly democratized creation of music. This meant lots of people created music. And lots of it was, to be perfectly honest, absolute shit. But then you also got Avicii.

You see the same with AI. There's a lot of garbage. I'm sure there are some gemstones amongst the mountains of trash.

Tweakability

One of the problems with many AI outputs is that they're all or nothing. AI music tools now give you stems - audio files for each part of the song, like drums, vocals, etc. But I don't think that's enough. You need to be able to tweak the output somehow – "I want a higher pitched snare", "I want a more organic bass", etc. This is where human creativity and intuition come in. We can refine and polish the AI-generated output to make it sound the way we want.

AI for art is all-or-nothing too. Midjourney gives you the whole image. We need layers to import into Photoshop! I want to change the background but keep the character the same. Though things like smart lasso tools can help with this, they're not perfect.

There is a MCP server for Ableton Live, and that's probably the way to go – giving AI control of the tools you already use, with full ability to change stuff. Interestingly enough, words and code are tweakable. You can take any text output, move it around, change the wording, delete stuff. Don't just take the output as is, people can tell!

People still pay for handmade things, even though mass production exists – and arguably creates a more 'perfect' product. The human touch is important to us.

We need the creatives

It’s sad to see artists so deeply alienated from what might be one of the most powerful creative tools ever built. Many of the concerns about job loss are valid. But we still need their voices in the room, taking part in the conversation, pushing the boundaries.

The medium is dominated by hackers and hobbyists, and people without their values. The early days of AI art were full of exploration, joy, and weirdness. But now, in many circles, creativity with AI is seen as betrayal.

I want the creatives back. Because if AI is just a tool, then surely the most valuable thing is the human using it. And if we keep pushing the artists away, we’re only going to end up with tools used by people who don’t care about art.

Let’s not lose the ones who do.