Let's Get on the Same Page: GenAI in the Creative Space.

Or, alternatively titled, Why Now is the Perfect Time to Stop Posting AI Content.

I'm writing this for the authors I see posting in the Writing Community, but it applies to anyone who is using and posting GenAI content. I want to be gentle, honest, and clear about the way you are (perhaps unknowingly) hindering yourself.

In case you are unaware, GenAI stands for Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence). GenAI is the kind of AI that "creates" (or generates) an image, text, etc. when given a prompt. GenAI has some extremely serious consequences, but I want to lead with how it is negatively affecting YOU within the creative space.

• AI does not think, it regurgitates.

For GenAI to generate an image, it first needed to absorb thousands (if not millions) of other images, so that it had reference material. The same is true for text output and reference text. To speak plainly, AI does not create anything, it merely pulls from its references and stitches them together into something "new." Here we immediately run into several problems with the creative community.

1. Where did the reference material come from? The answer, unfortunately, is that the material was stolen. This is not hyperbole. The development of GenAI happened so quickly that it could not be regulated, which means that AI companies unethically used the images, audio, text, etc. of countless creatives without their consent. This why we get the phrase "AI is theft." It is copyright infringement, which is why even mega-corp Disney is suing against AI firm Midjourney.

2. It's lazy. I'll be blunt. The use of GenAI simply doesn't look good. This is where I want to earnestly let authors (people I see on my Bluesky feed) know that the community as a whole has rejected GenAI, and you may be alienating yourself. If you're an Indie Author, I want to root for you. But when you post GenAI content, that content comes across poorly. At worst, you are aware that other artists' works have been stolen to create these images/texts, and you don't care. That would be antithetical to the creative spirit of the Writing Community (or similar spaces). At best, you might not know how GenAI functions (the way it infringes on copyright), but we, the community, don't know that you don't know. If you use AI to create an image, do you also use AI to write for you? We simply can't know. It breeds distrust in your products. So be authentic!

3. It harms other creatives. Let's expand upon that.

• Harm to the creative community.

These general harms apply across the creative space in general (and even into more mainstream work), but I'll focus on Indie Authors in particular. Bad-faith actors have used GenAI to "write" entire books and place them for sale. To begin with, this is unethical because the AI was created with stolen books and other creative works; the output is an amalgamation of the hard work of others. Many Indie Authors have been directly affected by this; corporations like Meta have used millions of books to build upon their AI without paying, crediting, or even notifying authors.

Authors (and other creatives) lose direct sales when their works are stolen, but they are then faced with an additional challenge: GenAI content floods the market. It's hard to be a creative. It's especially hard to be an Indie, without the benefits of traditional publishers, marketing, etc. And now, more than ever before, Indie Authors are having a hard time getting their voices heard; there is a sea of low-grade AI content to wade through.

Even when authors do not engage in the use of GenAI content, the overabundance of such content can hurt everyone. Authors are spending their own time trying to defend things like the em dash—a classic and beloved piece of punctuation that some people are now flagging as "AI." An argument now exists that em dashes are a clear way to identify AI content, even though the reason AI often uses em dashes is because it absorbed the work of actual authors. This is far from the worst thing AI has done, but it sure is annoying!

And, of course, there are creatives who are literally losing their jobs because of GenAI. Companies can selfishly use GenAI to get art, text, etc. and then fire the creatives whose very work enabled such AI to exist in the first place.

These are some of the main reasons that the creative community at large has roundly rejected GenAI, though there are more. For these reasons alone, I would highly encourage those in the creative space to shift away from their use of AI graphics and text. If you need resources for graphics, audio, etc., I assure you there are copyright-free alternatives that were made by humans (I'll link some sources below). Still, there are more aspects of GenAI that you should consider, if you aren't aware.

• AI is accelerating climate change.

Processing millions of books, movies, and images takes an unimaginable amount of computer power. These AI companies use an incredible amount of electricity, which in turn burns coal, gas, and other resources. And as their giant servers use up all of this power, they get extremely hot—water then needs to be used to cool them down. Fresh water is a precious resource, and Meta alone used 580 BILLION gallons of water for its AI servers in 2022 (enough water to meet the needs of 15 million households).

OpenAI (which owns ChatGPT), when creating GPT-3, generated 552 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That was just to create the model, not accounting for all the energy spent using it once it was available. All of that, and GPT-3 is already outdated. Since then, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 have been created and released. The unregulated rush to advance AI is burning through resources at an alarming rate.

This isn't something that can wait to be addressed, as the communities located around these AI server farms are immediately impacted by air and water pollution, leading to asthma, headaches, and more. GenAI is not necessary to society, and it is not worth the harm done to local communities and to the world at large.

• The results are often incorrect and sometimes harmful.

Because AI models are created by scraping data from all over the internet, the results are often incorrect, misleading, or otherwise harmful. Google's AI search has suggested eating glue and rocks. AI is not "intelligent." It is just an indexed search to find information that may or may not be correct or relevant.

GenAI also presents the opportunity for bad actors to produce intentionally misleading content. When weaponized, AI becomes a tool for misinformation and hate speech (like when Grok produced racist content).

• There is a lack of accountability.

Lawyers should not be outsourcing their casework to AI. Students should not be relying on AI to do their homework for them and not learning how to think critically and produce work for themselves.

The proliferation of AI content also gives people the choice to ignore or disbelieve real things because "it could be AI." GenAI muddies the waters of reality by creating content that can sufficiently fool people, or by creating an excuse to deny what is evident.

• In summary, it's just not worth it.

There are plenty of reasons to care about the surge of AI content, but at minimum, I hope you can see why people in creative spaces are distrustful of GenAI and will discourage its use. If nothing else, I hope to have helped you read the room so that you can engage more authentically within the creative community—you will find it to be a place of great connection and enthusiasm, when you are communicating authentically.

There are times people use GenAI content without realizing it. After all, the goal of these AI companies is to be able to produce content that looks authentic. Not everyone has an "eye" for generated images. As the images become more realistic, it is understandable that you might not recognize an image to be AI. There are certain tells that an image is fake, if you pay attention. Anecdotally, I find the lighting to be the most recognizable feature of a generated image. Everything is lit suspiciously well, and from confusing, inconsistent light sources.

That said, at least in the Writing Community on Bluesky, authors are less likely to engage with your posts if your image appears to be AI, so consistently posting AI content is really inadvisable.

If you want to use images with your posts but are not an artist, you can find free images and video to share from photographers on websites like Pexels and Pixabay (just be sure to change the content type to "authentic only"). Pixabay also has music!

If you have any questions or need help, just reach out the creative community. A life with GenAI is not a hill worth dying on. Rather, a life without GenAI may protect the world we live in.

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Sage T. Greene, Author