AI  Statement

I don’t take a simplistic position on generative AI.  I contain multitudes and my thoughts on it are distinctly in the grey area.  Yes, I use AI tools as part of my creative process.  Primarily for the visual art.  I don’t find it all that helpful for the vast majority of creative writing.

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The technology seemed to blow up overnight, born into an extractive system, trained in ways that often failed to respect the labor and consent of artists and writers. That harm is real, and I grasp the sense of betrayal it creates.. Yet I have to ask if our frustration is about the democratization of art, or the effects of end-stage capitalism?

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I support strong regulation, meaningful guardrails, and licensing structures that compensate the people whose work made these systems possible. I’m also deeply concerned about the ways chatbots can become substitutes for human attachment, and I believe safeguards against that kind of misuse are essential. 

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At the same time, the technology exists. There is no returning to a world before it. What remains is the question of relationship.

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I use AI as a supportive tool, not a replacement for human work or judgment. In visual art, I begin with my own sketches or photographs and combine them with purchased assets in post-production, editing heavily and composing intentionally. What I create with the aid of the machine IS what I envisioned.  With carpal tunnel, this has allowed me to keep making art; to focus on figures, ideas, and composition while delegating some physical strain to the robot. In writing, I use AI primarily for research and first pass editing before my human editor gets a crack at it. On, and for sure marketing because I'm rubbish at that.  This lets me focus on the important things.  Not whether I put my semi-colon in the right place (spoiler alert:  I don’t;  Ever.). The essays and stories are written by me, entirely.  Same with the essays and snippets here.  

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I don’t believe AI-generated work is inherently soulless. I experience it as a conversation between a human intention and a machine process. What people often rightly  object to is low-effort use: automation without care, authorship without responsibility. AI slop (though to be fair long before the machines were cranking out content there was a lot of empty click-bait “human slop” in there too). That isn’t what I’m interested in making.

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Like many technologies before it, AI can either deepen extraction or support creativity, depending on how it’s used and constrained. My aim is to remain grounded: to keep agency, meaning, and responsibility on the human side of the screen, while advocating for limits, accountability, and a future where this technology is made safer, fairer, less energy - intensive*, and harder to abuse.

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This is not an endorsement of unchecked AI.

It’s an attempt to meet a powerful tool with care, restraint, and intention.  You won’t find me telling another person how to create.  If you use AI.  Great.  If you hate it and want to paint, type, chisel in stone, or make a Spam sculpture. Also great. But, gawd, I’m exhausted of the drama over it. 

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*  Though the energy requirements of prompting an AI tool isn’t as horrific as It would seem.  It’s the training that’s such a killer.  And, of course, mining for bitcoin, but that’s a whole other rabbit hole.