Can Artists Embrace AI Without Selling Out?
I was scrolling through the gram the other day and I came upon an absolute beautiful nature image. I paused because it was so pretty, but then my next thought was "Darn it AI!".
Yup, I thought it was made by a robot. So much of the visual landscape is AI now, and I imagine a lot of the copy is AI too. Social media is loaded with it, and it’s getting harder and harder to spot.
Especially in the visual world, I get super annoyed when my social feeds are full of fakery.
I want real art and real photography.
However.
I myself use AI, both in art and in writing.
In fact (big reveal here) I'm writing this very blog with the help of AI. I know, what a mind bender.
To be fair, everything I've written so far is little old me, 100% authentic. But I will use ChatGPT to help me with a few things. I’ll flesh out an idea I know needs a bit more structure. I’ll ask it to be my editor to make sure my writing has proper spelling and flow. It will provide the SEO friendly chapter headings.
When I ask it to write for me, I always, ALWAYS re-write what it gives me. I think authenticity is important. Chat is quite advanced these days, but it still can't capture my voice in a way I think is believable.
In this article, I'm going to explain 3 major ways that I use AI in my art and business, and discuss some of the pitfalls and problems I see in the landscape.
How I Use AI in My Art and Creative Business
1) Sketching
I use Adobe Express image creation occasionally when I'm designing a project. I am doing a lot more commissions these days, and image creation helps me to create a lot of sketches to present to the client. I'll import my own art--paintings or drawings I've already made--give it some instructions and see what comes out. Sometimes I'll create a digital sketch and ask it to give me a more developed concept.
I could never make 10 sketches in an hour, but AI can help me do that so I can get closer to a composition or palette a client might want. Then I can turn it into actual, physical art. (Don't worry, I'll cover my concerns about this in the next section.)
2) CapCut
I really like the cutout green screen effect in video. If you've seen my art history explainers you'll know what I'm talking about. I can do a "green screen Josie" with Premiere Pro (where I do most of my editing), but it takes wayyyyy too long. So I import my videos into CapCut and it works some crazy magic for me. I haven't found another app that can do it so fast and accurately.
3) ChatGPT Writing & Research
There are multiple ways I use chat:
Brainstorming live presentations. Sometimes I know the general theme I want to write about but need help outlining sections or coming up with a strong structure.
Creating SEO-friendly headlines and meta descriptions. I hate thinking about stuff like SEO, but Chat understands what's needed and is able to provide it for me.
Giving me marketing and art biz advice. I've been working a lot more in YouTube lately, and I'm not an expert in how it works. So I ask it to give me best practices in developing my channel. However, I will say that the social media advice from ChatGPT is often a bit...antique. Remember, it's searching the whole internet. So it may find a few articles from 2019 and use those in its answers. But social media moves so fast that sources even from a year ago are already old news.
Importing a long transcript from a video and generating a summary. In my membership, Art Revenue Coaching, we'll have Q&A sessions that can be 90 minutes long. I'll import the whole transcript into the app, and it can create a clean, time stamped summary that can be used in the caption.
Proofreading and editing. I’ll paste in my finished writing and ask it to help with readability and catch typos.
Research assistant (with caveats—see below). Sometimes I want a quick overview of a topic or a starting point to explore further.
Personal uses. I recently gave Chat a bunch of my health statistics and asked it to help me develop a supplement program and workout routine. This way I can use it every day to reflect back my workouts, just like a coach. We are also using it to get our daughter ready for 7th grade math. And so much more... but please read the next section for my warnings and cautions.
The Problems with AI (Yes, There Are Many)
Ethical Concerns Around AI Imagery
This one is thorny. Here are a few big issues:
Copyright and consent. AI platforms like Midjourney or DALL·E have been trained on billions of images scraped from the internet—many from artists who never gave permission.
The Disney lawsuit against Midjourney. Yep, that’s happening. Big media is pushing back hard against AI-generated images that mimic or reproduce their IP.
Artists feel like their work is being stolen. Some artists have seen their recognizable styles used in AI tools without credit or compensation.
It’s hard to tell what’s real anymore. Hyper-realistic AI images are flooding feeds. As a viewer, it’s confusing. As a working artist, it’s discouraging.
The fear of becoming obsolete. A lot of artists (worry that clients will choose AI for speed and cost—and cut us out of the process altogether.
Where ChatGPT Gets It Wrong
ChatGPT is great for ideas and editing. But it’s not perfect. Sometimes it totally makes stuff up.
I call it "hallucinating". It gives me a juicy tidbit about an artist or artwork, but when I dive in further or cross reference, it doesn't appear to be factual.
This happens more than you’d think. It will invent museums, make up quotes, and reference nonexistent sources if you’re not careful. As someone who loves history and facts, I find this infuriating. ALWAYS fact-check your Chat-generated content if accuracy matters.
And then of course, so much of the content out there now feels eerily same-y. Because people are using AI tools to write everything and then they're not editing it. That generic “corporate creativity” tone is not awesome. You know it when you see it.
One other thing that can be annoying about ChatGPT is that the model is too eager to please and potentially sycophantic. I will ask it to be my business coach and walk through a strategy with me, but it can be too quick to tell me my ideas are the best ever and could never fail. This is not helpful.
I now have to instruct it to not flatter me and in fact, tell me everything that is WRONG with my idea.
Should Artists Use AI?
Here’s where I land: AI is a tool. Like a paintbrush, like Photoshop, like an intern who works 24/7 for free. But tools don’t make the art—you do.
What matters is how you use it. Are you using it to deepen your own creativity? To save time and gain clarity so you can make more real art? Are you editing and refining so your voice comes through?
Or are you outsourcing your originality because it’s easier?
I don’t think we should ignore AI. It’s here, and it’s only going to grow. But we can use it with intention—and make sure our work still sounds, looks, and feels like us.
Remember the beautiful nature image I mentioned at the beginning? It had that uncanny valley feel, and I immediately suspected it was AI, so I went to the account origin. And it turned out to be a well known landscape photographer--not AI in the end! I was so happy that it was actually real. But I'll tell you what--I double-checked.
And here's something else. I confessed to you that I was writing this very blog inside chatGPT. I am. Before the section "3) ChatGPT", it is 100% me. Then I created an outline and asked Chat to expand my concepts. In fact, ChatGPT just informed me that that about 75% percent of this was written by me, and 25% percent was my request to expand my ideas from my outline. Then I read through everything, and changed phrasing and words when it didn't sound like me.
My concluding summary below is 100% ChatGPT (included the emojis) LOL.
Recap: How I Use AI Without Losing My Voice
🤖 I use AI to speed up sketching and ideation for art commissions.
🎬 I rely on CapCut’s AI tools to streamline video editing for my Reels.
💬 I use ChatGPT for brainstorming, structuring, editing, and refining—but never without rewriting.
⚠️ I’m cautious about AI art tools, especially where copyright and ethics are concerned.
📚 I double-check anything Chat tells me about history, facts, or sources.
🎯 I aim to use AI as a creative assistant—not a replacement.
AI can be incredibly helpful—but only when used with care, awareness, and a healthy dose of editing.
