no I won’t paint your AI image

I have been working with strangers a good bit recently, and some of the time that has been incredible! And some of the time that has been really difficult. Because people are human and we have differing views and beliefs about art, the process, and what to do when you want a creative person to work with you. 

I shared a post about my dream mural clients already, so now is the time for my nightmare mural client story. A story that ultimately ended before anything got going, but happened nonetheless. Someone reached out to me recently wanting to pay for a small mural for her sister who was opening a PT clinic and wanted to add some whimsy for the kids she will be working with in PT. I was interested, despite their low budget ($1500 including supplies) because I figured it would be simple and quick, and get my name out there a little bit more. 

Pretty quickly, the PT sister was wanting me to cover more space than I originally was asked, and it snowballed from there. I was given some fairly straightforward and simple design ideas for inspiration, and I created a mock up for the client. She then sent me a link to ChatGPT with a completely different style of mural filling the entire clinic space. I asked her to not use AI but to communicate with me instead and let me know what she didn’t like about my original design. I told her I would be happy to create a new design with her updated requests in mind. She told me “I told the AI what I want, added the reference photos, and it gave me this and this is what I want” she was adamant that the ChatGPT design was what she wanted. 

I was beyond disappointed, I was angry. I told her that because the scope of the project expanded unexpectedly and the budget was low and she used an AI that I wasn’t going to work with her. She hadn’t paid anything yet, we could just part ways easily. 

And I’m glad I turned it down. After talking with my mentor about it a bit, and talking with other creative friends we all knew that working with this client would’ve been more stress and hardship than the $1500 would ever be worth.

There are many reasons to hate on AI, especially generative AI, and especially ChatGPT. For one, it’s terrible for the environment, depleting fresh water sources, clearing nature for data centers, and runoff from data centers contaminating the surrounding communities and watersheds. Environmental reasons alone are enough reasons for me to steer clear of ever using AI on purpose (it is sadly so built in to so much that I’m positive I have accidentally used it without realizing). 

From a creative perspective, it’s also terrible. AI tries to make people feel like they’ve made something without needing to practice a skill or try at all. They “create” art with prompts and the art isn’t even good. In the case of the mural client I talked about earlier, she was sending me a mock up when she didn’t like what I had offered (based on her reference images) instead of telling me what I could adjust. It was not just that she didn’t communicate her desires well, it was also that she disrespected me, the artist, by trying to tell me what to do because in her mind an AI was a better listener than me. She sent me a mock up that was an entirely different style, filling the entire clinic instead of the one space we agreed upon, and she didn’t tell me those desires before sending me the AI image. 

I hate AI in creative spaces because it is soulless and sets really impossible expectations for clients. Clients who don’t understand that depending on the time of day the colors might look different, or that wall texture impacts design; the AI shows them some version of a perfect image that cannot be perfectly replicated because humans are human and the real world is not a flat digital image.

I knew when she sent me the ChatGPT link that I wouldn’t be able to work with her. Our understandings of art ethics were too disparate to make it work. I knew she would be disappointed in the human experience of working with me because it would necessarily take time and look different. She couldn’t get the satisfaction of ease that an AI can give, she’d have to spend more money and time and patience to get a satisfying end product. I am not willing to work with someone that I have to explain ethics to. I shouldn’t have to tell someone that I have trained for half my life and an AI steals art from real people and regurgitates it, it can’t create something new or original and it never will. But humans can. Humans train in their passions and interests, they specialize in a style, they push their own boundaries, and develop over time. It is a slow and painful and beautiful process to become an artist. It is difficult to learn how to paint murals and to push oneself further in scale and design but it is so worth it. For the murals that fill the grey of winter, the bright spots in life and the world–it is worth the time it takes to learn how to create. 

So anyways, if you send me AI, I’m never working with you. Talk to me, the human, and tell me what you like and dislike, I’m happy to work through every question and idea you bring. Just don’t bring AI into the conversation.