As long as I can remember, I’ve been an artist. For me, art is a way to connect with others, make sense of life, express ideas, and share stories. Over time, I’ve developed an appreciation for the history of art and the many ways humanity has created and utilized it.
Since Paleolithic times, art has embodied humanity’s spiritual connection to the universe, nature, and the divine. From the cave drawings in Lascaux, France, to the religious icons of Byzantine churches, to the sculptures of the human figure in the Renaissance, art has reflected the wisdom and beliefs of the time.
As industrialization flourished and commercial art grew, illustrators like Beatrix Potter, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell brought art into our homes. Their vivid images sparked imagination and reflected the joys and struggles of everyday life and helped to make art a cherished part of our shared experience. Computers, creative software, and the internet have democratized the digital media industry and allowed more artists to reach a wider audience.
Now, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), a technology poised to affect all of humanity and industry, we must grapple with its profound implications and address these questions: How should we navigate AI’s role? If AI can replicate many tasks involving digital creation, should it replace humans in creative fields? Is this what we want? If art and media serve as bridges to our shared humanity, our collective experiences, and our connection to the world around us, do we want algorithms mediating these connections, or, particularly regarding commercial artists, replacing human output completely?
Unlike fine artists or performers, who are visible, commercial artists often work behind the scenes. Performers stand before an audience; their art is inseparable from their personhood. The artwork of the graphic designer, the copywriter, or the animator is often divorced from the creator’s identity. This invisibility makes these commercial artists particularly vulnerable to exploitation, putting them at risk for replacement by an algorithm and becoming casualties of what I call Digital Replacement.
What we lose: Digital Replacement
AI’s growth is built on a troubling foundation: the exploitation of human creativity. Corporations like Google have trained their algorithms on the vast repository of humanity’s digital lives without consent. Our writings, images, music, and videos have become the fuel for algorithms designed to replace us.
As someone who has spent years working on visual storytelling, I can see firsthand how the efficiency of AI tools presents a serious challenge to artists in the industry. The human element—the painstaking care taken to create a unique expression—risks being lost as more and more companies opt for quick, automated solutions. It’s this labor of love, often invisible to the casual viewer, that’s most threatened by AI.
We are witnessing not only a shift in how media is made but we are also experiencing a deep cultural loss. As more of our time is spent online, the real world is being replaced with algorithmically generated experiences. Commercial art has always reflected the cultural zeitgeist of its time. The bold lines of Art Deco, the psychedelia of the 1960s, the grunge aesthetic of the 1990s—these styles captured the spirit of their eras. They were shaped by human hands responding to cultural and social forces. AI disrupts this dynamic. Unconstrained by cultural or stylistic boundaries, AI produces work that is polished but rootless. Without style, there is no cultural fingerprint, no story of the era, no connection to humanity’s shared experience. Instead, we are at risk of being left with an endless stream of generic, contextless content…a bland digital echo of what art and media once were.
The Crisis of Two Worlds
Humanity now straddles two worlds: the real world and the digital world. The balance between these worlds has grown precarious. As we spend more time in the digital realm, we risk losing our tether to reality.
Foundational art education requires observation and engagement with the world around us. My training as an artist emphasized the importance of seeing and capturing what is observed, not what we think we see. As Lao-Tzu said, “the five colors make us blind, the five tones make us deaf.” Understanding the way light flows across form and plane and how to translate that into pigment was essential to understanding and representing the world around me. These practices are inherently tied to a sensory connection with the physical world, a connection that AI cannot experience or care about because it lacks both perception and the human capacity for feeling.
The digital world offers seductive comforts, promising to fulfill many of our desires, but it also risks distancing us from the deeper, more meaningful aspects of life. The more we rely on the convenience of the digital realm, the more we may risk losing touch with what makes us human.
This unregulated space raises existential questions about how far we are willing to let technology mediate our most human experiences. The great Argentine cartoonist, Quino, once captured this sentiment in an image that depicts our shared loss when we allow computers to replace us. His illustration, with its blend of humor and tragedy, is a stark reminder of what is at stake.
Acknowledgment of AI in the Creative Process
I am no Luddite. AI has tremendous potential to enhance human creativity and efficiency. However, its unchecked use comes at a cost particularly for commercial artists and media creators, whose work shapes the stories, visuals, and narratives that define our culture. If we allow AI to dominate creative fields, we risk losing the depth that makes art and media meaningful.
I want to acknowledge that I used ChatGPT to help in refining this essay, along with my wife Bethany, who kindly assisted with the editing 🙂 I am not a professional writer, but I think I have something important to say. I used AI as a tool to help me communicate more effectively. AI is not a replacement for a professional writer.
This distinction is important. My use of AI here demonstrates its potential as a collaborator in creative processes, but it also highlights the risk it poses. I am not displacing anyone by writing this essay. But imagine a world where corporations or individuals use AI to replace not just one writer, but twenty, or an entire creative team. This is the current reality for many working artists, writers, musicians, designers, animators, whose livelihoods are threatened by the efficiency of AI tools.
My collaboration with AI is an example of its proper role: to enhance, not replace, human creativity. It is a partnership that respects the boundaries of authorship and the preservation of the human voice in all the arts.
Transparency about where and how AI is used is essential across all fields, from creative industries to everyday digital interactions. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, it is increasingly difficult to discern whether the entities we interact with online—whether bots or creators—are human or machine.
When AI is used transparently, it can enhance human creativity rather than displace it. Transparency ensures that AI serves as a collaborator, not a deceptive substitute for human effort.