Here I go again, fighting to expose the irrational nature and innate hypocrisy of the “no AI in creative works” movement.
This time, I’m addressing a YouTube video that was put out by a content creator who I both respect and admire. And what I’m calling out is not something that he did wrong — I’m fairly certain he didn’t even notice he was doing it — rather I’m using his video as an example of how inane and blind the anti-AI position can be.
In this video, he was going step-by-step through the process of creating and designing a tabletop game. At the point where he was designing the rulebook, he showed how he takes photos of the game’s miniatures and superimposes them over digital backgrounds.
When demonstrating this method, he threw up a huge text apology/explanation that he had generated an AI image for the background but would replace it with something he hand-painted as soon as he could.
This wasn’t a small callout — it was a break-your-neck disclaimer that screamed “I’m afraid of being crapped on for using an AI background.”
We’re not to the really irrational part of this yet, because I want to address a couple of points here first. One, the AI-generated background was never going to be the central component of that piece of art. It was the background of an image that the creator took of miniatures the creator made, and it was being placed in a book that the creator wrote. That singular image would essentially be a fractional, thrice-removed part of the much larger work. Crapping on him for using an AI background would be like attacking a landscape artist because they didn’t build the barn in the background of their painting.
Secondly, I want to point out that later in the video, he replaced the AI background with something he hand-painted. And frankly, the AI background looked ten times better. Why? Because he was creating this entire game, from scratch, in 48 hours as part of a challenge. He felt forced to waste time making something worse just to avoid screaming stupidity from clueless outsiders.
That scenario is a perfect example of how AI is a powerful force-multiplier for creatives. It can take something like a background image — an almost trivial subcomponent of what you’re trying to accomplish — and get it out of the way fast. That way, you can focus on the parts of the project you actually care about.
But…because people lose their minds and get all “cancel culture” over AI, he was forced to spend his precious time making an inferior image. This means the product itself suffered. And guess what? Being forced to hand-paint his own background image did not save someone’s job. It just made his job harder.
What Really Blew My Mind
We all know the anti-AI argument is loaded with hypocrisy and arbitrary lines in the sand. You’re allowed to use digital tools, but only the ones the anti-AI crowd deems worthy. And only in situations they determine are “ethical” — with their only criterion for ethics being “did you use something with ‘AI’ in the name?” No nuance. No reasoning to back it up.
This creator’s video proves this point perfectly. Immediately after making a big deal about how he did not use AI on the background image, he goes deep into how he uses Photoshop’s automation tools to remove the background from his photograph!
So in almost the same breath, you get “don’t worry, I didn’t use AI” and “here’s how to use a machine-learning powered tool to save time and effort”. One of these demonstrations is perfectly fine, but the other would have angry anti-AI people carpet bombing his comment section.
What drives this point home even harder is that, in his narration, he talked about how in a former graphic design job, his primary duty was manually removing backgrounds from images. It would take him hours, and now it can be done with the click of a mouse.
Yeah…that’s literally talking about how machine learning (which is what most AI tools are, in reality) made a job obsolete! Yet this fact is lauded in the same video where an AI-generated background is treated like a smallpox blanket.
Again, I have nothing against this creator or what he did. I’m not even going to mention a name or link the video because I don’t want my observations about anti-AI culture to be twisted into some critique of him. (I’m sure you can find the video based on what I’ve shared here if you really wanted to.)
My intent is to illustrate how the radical anti-AI crowd is harming creatives more than it is helping them. Their lack of reason and stubbornness is doing nothing more than robbing creators and artists of their freedom of choice — and in the end, that’s going to harm their work, waste their time, and limit their options for growth.
There will always be people with skill and people without. There will always be tools that people from both categories use. And the output from the people with skill will always be better. Stop being afraid of AI. Stop hobbling and attacking legitimate creatives.
If you’re that concerned about the future of art, go make something. It’s not your job — or your right — to tell other people what tools they can and cannot use.
