A Letter to the Artists During the Great AI Divide

Dear Artists,

there is something happening to art and artists right now. It’s an uncomfortable reckoning. AI is out there and we are being chased by villagers with pitchforks. 

Did you make something too polished? AI. 

Did you work too quickly? AI. 

Try some new brushes on Procreate, and your style looks different? AI

Your work is no longer sufficient evidence that you made that work. 

So what has changed? We are still doing the work, but now we have to prove that we are human while we do it. 

We draw, paint, design. We write, sketch, cut up little pieces of paper, and tape things into our notebooks. We immerse ourselves in our craft and develop within this space while we grow as artists. It’s 4 am and we are changing our minds. We are making mistakes and starting over. Then finally, we get to the point where the work finally speaks. Own this, my friend: None of this suddenly stopped for us because of AI, but the suspicion that it did has started. 

But here’s the thing Party People: our value as an artist is going down with some people, but it’s going up with others. The people who have always treated creative work as a commodity value art less than they ever did before. If an image can appear in seconds, why should anyone pay for the journey it took to get there? They don’t care about the concept, the thinking, the drawing, experimenting, revising, failing, starting over, and developing an actual point of view. 

If you only value the output, AI probably looks like a bargain!

But something very different is happening with the clients that I consider my best clients. They are valuing me more. 

There is a human being on the other side of the work making something for them. An artist bringing their vision to life. They understand that hiring an artist was never about the ability to deliver an image; they were hiring the person making the decisions that created that image. Judgement. Taste. Experience. Hands. Views. Provenance. AI and I both have the ability to listen to a half-formed idea and translate that into some kind of image, but who is the one cares about what they are trying to say? The artists ability to make connections that aren’t obvious is the very human experience worth valuing. This comes from a lifetime of looking, thinking, and making. This is human work. 

I think we are discovering that there are people who care very deeply about that. They were never about buying an artifact; they were about working with an artist, and suddenly that distinction matters a lot. So this is far from a crisis for artists. This is a sorting machine. The people that only valued the thing you produced now have an endless supply of things. Let them.

And this frees us up to work with the people who value the person and expertise of the artist whose hands are doing it. The big upside? Those people are becoming much easier to recognize. 

Because this is new territory for all of us, it may be our (very human) instinct to defend ourselves, but here’s the thing: we shouldn’t have to turn the act of making art into evidence that we are artists. 

Keep going.

Keep making the work. Show the process because you love it and people love watching you do it! Keep drawing, painting, designing. Do whatever it is that you do with your own hands and mind that lets others into the peculiar way you see the world. 

But don’t spend any of your energy trying to prove yourself to the villagers. Not everyone needs to understand your value, and you need to spend that energy on the people that do. 

AI makes some value your work less, and others value you more. 

Pay attention. They’re both telling you something important. 

Lean into it; find your people. 

Truly. LP (not AI)