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12 Free Things You Can Do Instead of Using AI Art

Why the use of AI art & writing is so pernicious

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All illustrations by Jason McBride

Almost every piece you read online is accompanied by an image. Why? Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, many blogs were just walls of text. We all quickly relearned the principle that newspapers and magazines had discovered hundreds of years earlier — people don’t like walls of text in short-form writing. Images help make words more digestible.

With the advent of social media and smartphones, images became a tool for helping your work stand out in feeds. Images help with discoverability.

Why do so many people spend significant amounts of time writing a poem, essay, or explainer post and then use AI-generated art to dress it up? Why do so many people use AI writing instead of doing their own thinking?

There are two main drivers of this kind of AI usage. People believe they don’t have time to write or create/find an image, or they think they don’t have the right kind of creativity to make art. Both are rooted in fear and scarcity.

They are also both bullshit.

Don’t shortchange yourself.

All art, including writing, music, dance, and visual art, is about thinking. When you use AI, you are outsourcing your brain, damaging…

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Jason McBride
Jason McBride

Written by Jason McBride

Sr. B2B Copywriter | Poet | Illustrator | Amateur Human | https://weirdopoetry.com/

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