Let’s get something out of the way: yes, I use AI — as part of a workflow that also includes the traditional digital art tools I have been using for over 25 years. Adobe and I go way back. AI came into that toolkit about five years ago, before most people had an opinion about it, before it became a culture war, before everyone had a hot take ready to deploy in someone’s comments section. I was in it — tinkering, exploring, building worlds, feeding a brain that is wired to go deep on technology and never come back up for air.

So when someone dismisses my work, or tells me that using AI makes me a bad artist, I want to be honest about what I actually feel: not shame. Not defensiveness. Mostly just tired. Tired because that kind of comment doesn’t come from a real place of inquiry or any genuine desire to be part of a solution. It comes from someone exercising their free will to parrot a surface-level “AI is bad” talking point with no real advocacy behind it. Everyone is entitled to their opinions — I mean that. But I don’t accept the vitriol being pushed by people who want us angry with each other instead of holding the right people accountable for what is actually a very real and very profitable agenda.

Because here is what is actually happening while we are arguing with each other on Instagram.

The corporations are not waiting for us to finish this fight.

AI is already embedded in the systems that run the world. Your bank uses it. Your healthcare provider uses it. The algorithms sorting what you see, who gets hired, what news reaches you, what credit you qualify for — all of it has AI built into the infrastructure. There is not a single meaningful system in modern life that has not already been touched by this technology.

So the question was never really “AI or no AI.” That ship sailed. The question is who gets to shape it, who gets to hold it accountable, and who is in the room when the decisions get made.

Right now? Mostly the people with the most to profit from it.

And while the rest of us are busy being angry at individual artists for their creative process, the corporations are grateful for the distraction.

I am not sitting on the sidelines.

I am politically active in advocating for ethical AI. I show up in those conversations, I follow the legislation, I care about what our governments are and are not doing to slow this down and regulate it responsibly. I want environmental accountability — real accountability, not PR. The water usage, the energy consumption, the decisions being made at the expense of communities who never consented to any of it — these things matter to me and I am not quiet about them.

I am also currently learning Python. Not because I need another skill on a resume. Because I want to be eligible for Anthropic’s fellowship program focused on AI safety and security. I want to understand this technology at a deeper level so that I can be a more effective voice — not just someone with opinions, but someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

That is what responsible engagement looks like to me. Not cheerleading. Not purity. Getting in the room.

Being angry at the wrong people is a corporate strategy.

I mean this sincerely: the people profiting most from unchecked AI development benefit when the public’s anger is directed at each other instead of at them. A divided, distracted public that is busy policing one another’s creative choices is a public that is not organizing, not legislating, not holding anyone with real power accountable.

Whether you use AI in your work or you never touch it, that choice does not change what is being built into the infrastructure around you. It does not change the environmental decisions being made by the companies scaling this technology. It does not change who is lobbying against meaningful regulation or which governments are moving too slowly to catch up.

Your anger is a resource. It is worth spending on something that can actually move.

What I want is pretty simple.

I want governments to force a slowdown. I want real environmental standards before another data center drains another water supply. I want safety and security to be non-negotiable, not afterthoughts. I want the humans who understand this technology — who are inside it, working with it, building with it — to be part of the policy conversations instead of locked out of them.

I have been using AI as part of my creative practice for five years. It is a tool in my toolkit. It fits the way my neurodivergent brain works and it has expanded what I can make. I am not apologizing for that.

But I am also not just a user. I am paying attention. I am advocating. I am learning. I am showing up.

You do not have to agree with me about AI. You do not have to use it. What I would ask is that we all get a little more precise about where we point our energy — because the problems worth solving are bigger than any one artist’s Instagram feed.