Many of us expected the future to have flying cars; to have high speed universal healthcare, we dreamed to explore space and live in a world where we cured the ailments of planet Earth so we could live in lands lush and green. As it turns out, we’re still stuck in the past, as we slave away doing mind numbing tasks, with our entertainment and other enrichment slowly turning to artificial generated content.

The overnight explosion of AI content turned heads in all directions, including mine, but not in all the same. People changing their profile pictures to images of themselves overly edited to enhance perfect features, or fantasy creatures that look like they would have come from high budget blockbuster films.

My heart hoping it to be just another internet phase, but my brain telling me there’s something else happening, and as an artist this isn’t looking good.

It’s hard enough to be an artist, competing with others who may know more, or have better access to places, and people who can get them better networks. Trying to navigate the 2020’s with more and more people desiring to be an artist and live the romanticized life of one, feels like trying to swim against the current.

Now with AI playing the field, people have diminished the value of art by telling artists with their actions, and their keyboards, that art never meant anything to them. The images painted by the great masters, the illustrations in the books they grew up with, cartoons they say shaped them, were nothing but colours and shapes they saw. Pretty pictures, simply “drawings,” and nothing more.

Stealing styles, and also stealing value, the words, “You are obsolete” echo through the minds of so many who have spent their lives as artists, trudging the already difficult world to get anywhere.

“You are worthless” wakes me up at night, in a cold sweat, “How do I defeat this machine?” while thinking about the legend of John Henry.

Artists are not the only ones to be affected, a few years later now we scroll through the internet overly judging pictures, information, and even audio, concentrating deeply to see if this work is done by human hands or by a computer’s intelligence. Due to situations, the spread of misinformation has become overwhelming, with the use of AI, it has now taken to a whole new level – we can rewrite history with “proof” for the masses.

Seeing “vintage” photos of well-known faces in places to incriminate them, the comments reading, “We have evidence! We can now send them to prison!” dismissing the number of fingers on the figures, and the strange lighting throughout the photograph.

A lie and a conspiracy can become verification all because one person felt the need to harm another, and with every creation of AI content, the beast learns, and becomes a little better at passing as real, pushing deadly propaganda. In doing this, a person can become subject to unexpected images of violence, even sexual violence.

There are already lawsuits where people are suing AI content websites for creating images of women, and minors, nude. It has been said that some states have worked to create measures to criminalize sexualized AI generated images of minors, however that doesn’t stop the ability for a person to easily create and destroy someone’s life.

Waking every day to the overwhelming reality of a world that feels like a battlefield every which way I look, I would find the arts a safe haven from the torment of reality. A way to ground myself seeing that humans can create beautiful things instead of just destroy. Enjoying my own time with my tools, writing stories and creating images to a

ccompany them, seeing people laugh and cry – seeing people feel. It’s not easy work, but it healed when people would tell me what I can do with my own hands and my own imagination would also create an outlet of healing for them.

I can take people out of this world and put them in their own safe haven. With the rise of AI that healing has become moot, a speeding bullet into the dystopian future were the words consume, consume, consume become the driving force of living, a way to hold hands with capitalism. It’s been said patience is a virtue, to wait is to be rewarded, but those who uttered those words don’t seem to live in the future of 2026.

A place when things can be spat out in an instant and accepted, be it good or bad, just as long as its done and the companies can make money.

So much can be said about this ever-growing concern: the fact that it copies already existing works, how it’s causing brain rot, killing creativity and the ability to be able to think objectively. How AI has the ability to do lasting harm to unsuspecting persons, even how it’s destroying the planet with its high carbon emissions, and so much more.

I’ll say in short, AI is the new selling out, a place for the anti-creatives. It’s simply not punk.