My best friend recently taught me an important lesson about AI pessimism: Don't remain silent and accept no substitutes

On account of my truly abysmal handwriting, the last time I picked up a pencil was to doodle a crude Magikarp in my best friend's bathroom. My little Magikarp is surrounded by far more impressive sea creatures, as I've somehow ingratiated myself with a group of professional artists. As you can probably understand, between a chat history full of silly sketches and incredible images my friends bashfully claim are 'just quick thumbnails,' the subject of generative AI casts a long shadow.

For instance, earlier this year Nottingham Pride unveiled a brand-new, very obviously AI-generated logo. My best friend of multiple decades is local illustrator and puppet maker Charlie Orchard, and they were understandably disappointed. Venting their displeasure into the void of social media, Charlie didn't expect a response… but got more than they bargained for.

Rather than mealy mouthed platitudes about the accessibility of generative AI for small, community-based organisations, Notts Pride offered my bestie a job—with a pay rate far exceeding 'for exposure' at that. Over the last few months, Charlie has not only created a bespoke, hand-drawn illustration for the Notts Pride event logo, but she's also redesigned their march route maps too. Huh, well, that's a twist not even I was expecting given the current state of… well, everything.

For those who've been living under a rock, allow me to briefly recap: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg insists artificial superintelligence is 'in sight,' and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis theorises that Artificial General Intelligence will be a reality "maybe in the next five to 10 years," potentially ushering in an era of "radical abundance." However, in the here and now ChatGPT is aiming to offer slightly less dubious life advice, while still offering questionable medical advice.

Okay, to be fair to AI tech, it does have some useful applications outside of copying human creativity, such as finding security vulnerabilities in code and, of course, diagnosing sick dogs. Still though, big tech's blue sky thinking for our AI future feels far out of reach.

Did you know? ????I illustrated the logo overlay and both the march route & site maps for #NottsPride this year! V proud of them for putting their money where their mouth is when I called out their disappointing AI logo ???? I wish more companies would follow suit!Our little family had an amazing day! ❤️

— @keepdrawingcharlie.bsky.social (@keepdrawingcharlie.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T08:36:32.811Z

So, why am I bothering to share my anecdote about Notts Pride hiring one human artist? In essence, because it demonstrates what's still possible when humans come together, and that it's never too late to make a choice other than AI.

Pessimism wants you to believe there's simply no ethical way to collect the data required to train these models, and any content you put online is just going to get scraped no matter what. Pessimism dictates that diffusion based models are going to gobble up the visual arts, while LLMs will no doubt put me out of a job before long too (indeed, some folks in the comments will assert this has already happened). Pessimism hisses that once big corporations have supped from the poisoned chalice of generative AI, why would they ever go back? But pessimism doesn't so much empower change as completely paralyse.

Also, sometimes, that little negative voice at the back of your head spouting all this bleak techno-pessimism stuff is just full of shit. For one thing, Cloudflare is now offering some very promising options that could allow content creators to either block AI crawlers or charge for the privilege to scrape their content. Cloudflare has also publicly called out AI-powered search engine Perplexity for attempting to sneakily get around these aforementioned blocks.

For another, a lot of audiences will vocally reject in-game assets if they catch even a whiff of AI. Besides Call of Duty coming under fire for its six-fingered zombie Santa, Hearthstone has repeatedly earned the ire of its community for allegedly using AI-generated assets. When a huge company like Activision Blizzard decides not to either rely on any of the artists in its employ or, you know, pay a freelancer, instead opting for AI, it feels cheap despite how expensive full price releases are these days (not to mention how it suggests maybe not great management practices).

There is also the argument that AI generated assets just look bad—see six fingered zombie Santa as a case in point. The 'AI sheen' is definitely not for me, but I also understand there's no accounting for taste. If someone genuinely thinks AI-generated art looks 'fine,' they're entitled to their opinion—just as I'm entitled to give them a sideways glance. Personally, if 'bad' art is to grace my gaze, I'd rather it was authentically human and vulnerable.

Speaking of, it's hard to ignore the distinctly anti-human sentiment that runs throughout so much pro-genAI waffle. To dig more into this thread of the problem, I really recommend our Jacob's recent philosophical deep dive into the Enlightenment era ideals arguably fuelling AI fanaticism that sees humans "as no more than a dispensable tool on the road towards scientific progress and transcendence."

As for me and my big feelings on the subject, I'm focussing on a slightly different, interwoven thread.

So, remember how no one enjoyed that time Sony used AI to puppet Aloy? Least of all the actor behind Horizon Zero Dawn's flame-haired protagonist, Ashly Burch, who used the incident to call for greater labour protections in the age of AI. Or what about that time Netflix's co-CEO Ted Sarandos was keen to tout The Eternaut's seconds of GenAI VFX as "10x faster" to make than a traditional VFX team? Or how about that time hundreds of Microsoft game devs were laid off and then allegedly replaced with AI they helped develop (to say nothing about how Microsoft's Gaming Copilot is coming for guides writing)?

For me, labour concerns lie at the core of my broadly anti-AI stance. I don't want my words, art, or likeness to be fed into the black box of AI because that effectively closes me out of the loop of being fairly compensated for my work. Why commission me or my friends if you've trained a machine to sort of approximate our work, right? But why is that 'good enough' for some creative execs? And why do they need such a ridiculous amount of juice to imitate even a fraction of a freelance creative's power?

An extra special patreon commission for my bestie @koeniginkatze.bsky.social, who wanted herself as a character from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!She never claims her monthly sketches so I spent longer on this one for her ????❤️Get a sketch each month right here: www.patreon.com/keepdrawingc...

— @keepdrawingcharlie.bsky.social (@keepdrawingcharlie.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T08:36:32.820Z

Allow me to once again return to Nottingham Pride, a considerably smaller organisation than any others I've referenced throughout this opinion piece. After dabbling with AI and getting called out, you know what they did? They course corrected. They now enjoy great art and a fresh new professional relationship, while my best friend got a job, resulting in one less use of AI to choke the planet. Huzzah!

Sure, it's a small, local organisation but it still leaves me feeling hopeful. Let me harken back to Jacob's philosophical feature for a spell, and highlight a paragraph that's a particular favourite of mine:

"I'm a big proponent of gaming intentionally, treating it as a meaningful activity to be appreciated and valued, in part for the creativity that went into whatever game we're playing. I've been bashing the ever-loving faecal matter out of Killing Floor 3 lately, for instance, and while it's fun to get lost in the dopamine-fuelled progression system, I try to keep myself rooted in understanding that I'm sitting down to connect with other people for a common goal in a game that's had a lot of time and energy poured into it by real humans, really creating something."

Art—like games—is a community effort that connects us to other humans. And it is through community that we can perhaps avoid losing sight of one another in the wake of AI's long shadow… reach out to your local freelance creative and commission them today!

Bottom line, I cannot get behind the sentiment that gen-AI is inescapable and there's nothing we can do about its proliferation throughout professional creative spaces. We can't afford to be silent on such a pressing, wide-reaching labour issue, for one thing. For another, AI pessimism paralysis simply doesn't serve us—and I'd much rather be gobby about it.