Confessions of a so-called AI Artist: Am I Part of the Problem?

I used to draw comics. Badly. But I loved it—the scratch of pencil on paper, the hours spent erasing and redrawing, the slow, painful process of bringing something new into the world. Now, with AI, I can create images in seconds that I never could have drawn in a lifetime. It’s exhilarating. It’s also terrifying.

Every time I generate an image, a little voice in my head whispers: What if this is cheating? What if, by relying on AI, I’m contributing to a world where no one learns to draw anymore? Where originality is replaced by endless variations of the same recycled data? What if we lose the skill, the craft, the struggle that makes art meaningful?

But then I remember: every artistic tool, from the camera to Photoshop, was met with resistance. The real question isn’t whether AI is “cheating”—it’s what we choose to do with it. Can we use it to push boundaries, to create things we’ve never seen before? Or will we just use it to churn out more of the same?

I don’t have the answers. But I do know this: Guilt won’t stop me from creating. Maybe the best we can do is use AI as a tool, not a crutch—to explore, to experiment, and to keep asking hard questions.

[This post was creating using Le Chat by Mistral – you wouldn’t have thought this is my real voice and narrative, would you?]