Ego and Ethics in the Great AI Art Debate

To the person who inspired this essay: Thank you. I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile. Also, you’re way too talented for this, and I hope you figure that out before you waste years of time and energy performing moral superiority that could have been spent developing and sharing your own creative gifts. The world needs your creations, your authenticity, your heart. Please remember that 🤍

The Muse for this Essay

Today in my email inbox I saw I had a new message from someone I didn’t know on Etsy. As my shop is still new, this feels exciting – “maybe it’s a customer and not spam! What did they say? How can I help them?”

Well, this message was not that. The message was:

“Girl why would you advertise your products as if you drew them and they’re all AI lol. That’s ridiculous”

This person seemed to be referencing some pin-up-style sexy Santa men I called “Holiday Hotties.” I had created the base graphics with AI, and edited meticulously by hand in Procreate to create cute Christmas wrapping paper, cards, ornaments. This was the first product that had started doing well in my Etsy shop, despite dozens of listings featuring more “handmade” designs.

The message was unsolicited, from a total stranger. There was a mocking tone to it, though casually disguised as “friendly,” calling me “girl.” 💁🏼‍♀️ Hmm, not a good start… But, I get it. The flood of AI-generated products on Etsy is having a real impact! And a lot of it is junk, unfortunately. That’s not good for anyone using Etsy – customers, sellers, or even Etsy as a marketplace and business.

So I responded:

“I’m sorry? I am not advertising them as if I drew them. In the designs where I use AI, my descriptions explicitly say some graphic elements were generated by AI. My videos show me editing and refining the graphics in Procreate because it takes a lot of work to get the details, inconsistencies and illogical stuff to look correct. I put a lot of time and attention to making sure the AI pieces are as close to “perfect” as they can be, rather than publishing products with messed up hands, faces and other details, which is what a lot of people are doing.

I personally want the quality [of my products] to be excellent. That takes a lot of time, whether working with AI or doing everything by hand. My descriptions and videos are meant to show that. And there are other pieces in my shop that are completely done by hand, so it’s not ‘all’ just one thing”

The response:

“You don’t know how ai works do you lol
You’re contributing to stealing from real artists
You should hire someone that could actually draw and make designs for you and not falsely advertise those pictures as art
The videos on your listings show as if you were drawing them, but if you say so, whatever
Also selling gay stuff and everything and I bet you’re not even part of this community ☠️yeah profit from the gays”

Wow, that devolved quickly! I looked at this person’s shop, and they are clearly talented. Their work shows skill, creativity, vision.

(A very tickling side note: while this person’s art was beautiful, almost all the designs in their store were celebrity likenesses! Prints, mugs, t-shirts of famous people and their lyrics, quotes, etc… Literal use of others’ identities for profit, which is a legally-recognized form of misappropriation 🙈)

They could be making beautiful things, growing their craft, building community. Instead, they’re here in my inbox… And based on this message, they’re not really here to engage in a meaningful conversation with another human… But maybe you want to engage thoughtfully with this topic? Let’s get into it!!!

Critique as Performance

If you’re online in 2025, you might notice the script this person followed:

Lead with moral certainty (“you’re lying/stealing/exploiting”)
Ignore evidence to the contrary (dismiss, deflect, “whatever”)
Escalate to character attacks when the argument fails
Disengage when dominance doesn’t land (I replied again thoughtfully and they didn’t respond)

This isn’t a helpful, constructive discussion, or a concerned creator genuinely trying to understand someone else’s process. It’s ego maintenance disguised as ethics.

The Goal of this Essay

I consider myself blessed by the fates to have received this beautiful example of moral posturing as a substitute for self-examination. I want to break down what was said in these messages, argument by argument – because this isn’t about me, or even about AI. People are freaking out about AI but really, all of our sweet human ego games rot creative culture more than art made with artificial intelligence ever could. Bear with me.

“Falsely advertising those pictures as art”

This person claimed I was presenting AI work as hand-drawn, when I had clearly stated “some graphics generated by AI, entire composition edited and refined by hand” in all the relevant product descriptions. The videos they referenced are clips of my editing process in Procreate of specific elements of larger pieces, which helps to assert the quality of the graphics.

If disclosure itself were the concern, then accuracy would have resolved the issue. However, it didn’t – and without any concrete evidence to back up their accusation, we can peel back the layers of narrative-building at play here:

The videos of me working in Procreate are interpreted as an attempt to deceive people, rather than evidence of transparency
The AI disclaimers are ignored entirely, even when referenced directly
The subordination of the work itself: “falsely advertising those pictures as art“

The implication is, even though the use of AI is clearly disclosed, that somehow it should be more obvious, and that the use of AI in the first place is inherently deceptive because it’s not “art” (but we’ll get to that later). Why is that?

AI is a medium, not a moral test

A painter lists their medium as “oil on canvas.” A photographer notes “digital print.” A sculptor might say “bronze” or “mixed media.” These disclosures exist in the description or beside the work (and not plastered across the front) because, first and foremost, what matters to the audience is what they’re seeing and how it makes them feel. A customer cares about what they’re getting, and whether it meets their needs. In its purest form, receiving or purchasing art is not about performing some sort of moral verification – it is about the impact a piece has, and the vibe it creates, the story it tells, and how someone connects with it.

Compared to any other medium, how much more “transparent” “should” the use of AI be? The demand that AI use be treated differently than other mediums – that if you’re not using big, bright, red WARNING labels, you’re somehow being deceptive – is not holding others accountable in honest transparency.

The moral language is being used as a weapon, and not to promote truth, equity, or good work. Because underneath the moral indignation there’s a belief that “fake AI artists” need to somehow to apologize for their process, grovel for legitimacy, and accept that creations made with AI are inherently “less-than” “real art.”

When “real artists” becomes an in-group that excludes the perceived threat, i.e. “fake AI artists,” to maintain status, this is becomes a very fragile identity protection mechanism.

Making other people or art “bad” to in order to make yourself or your art seem “better” just tears something down in order to build yourself up. This is inherently a pretty unstable foundation and requires a lot of maintenance.

Not to mention, it’s a defensive position that doesn’t actually dedicate energy towards creating impact (or selling any art pieces, if that’s the goal)… so put your weapons down, you silly goose! If you rely on power games like this to keep your own fears and insecurities quiet, it might feel good in the short term, but it’s not a sustainable way to build confidence as a creative person or entrepreneur.

“You’re Stealing from Real Artists”

This is the big one. The “moral center” of the anti-AI crusade. Basically, the argument is that using AI = theft, because AI was trained on artists’ work and therefore it is unethical to produce art with it. The thing is, this argument is based on a confusing, complex foundation of information where there is no one single fact that makes this verifiably accurate across the board, and completely removes user agency.

Now, let’s get into the real material and philosophical discussion around this.

Materially, this is a complex discussion

I want to start by saying: the legal and ethical questions around AI use and training are REAL and COMPLICATED. Some AI models have been trained on datasets that include copyrighted work without clear consent or compensation structures. AI music generators can reproduce specific artists’ vocal styles with eerie precision. Image generators trained on specific artists’ portfolios can mimic their distinctive techniques closely enough to potentially harm their market position. And these are just examples of ethically dense circumstances where the artist in question is alive!

Even the use of publicly available artwork for training AI models remains controversial. Some argue that even though the data is publicly accessible, the process of training AI on it without explicit consent from individual artists raises moral concerns, particularly regarding attribution and the devaluation of artistic influence. Critics point out that different AI models can learn from vast datasets, and potentially incorporate or replicate elements of specific artists’ styles without proper acknowledgment, which some view as erasing the influence of the original creators.

Model training aside, it’s also extremely important consider that the ethical use of AI depends heavily on the user’s actions. There are companies that make an effort to provide user control and transparency, which is a step toward responsible management, but the moral landscape remains nuanced and subject to ongoing discussion for good reason.

These are legitimate concerns that need addressing through better legal frameworks, clearer consent mechanisms, and compensation models. Artists deserve protection and they deserve compensation for their contributions to humanity, and the speed of AI development has outpaced our ability to create those protections.

But – and it’s a big one 😉 – screaming “theft” at individual creators using legal tools doesn’t address any of this. It just creates a hostile environment that conflates individual users with systemic problems.

Philosophically, culture is not copyrightable

With complete acknowledgement of the complex, controversial discussion around the ethical use of AI for material benefit, we can now turn our attention to a pretty simple philosophical concept: AI, just like every artist ever, is “trained” on other artists’ work. We are all shaped by everything around us. We are all products of learning, influence, and visual culture.

Let’s use the example of vintage pinup and magazine illustrations from the 1940s-50s. This was a broad commercial style of an era, used by hundreds of illustrators working for publications like Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, and various advertising campaigns. Often the works were commissioned and uncredited, and over time established a visual language of glamour, charm, and idealized masculinity/femininity. Artists like Gil Elvgren, George Petty, and Alberto Vargas became known for this style, but they didn’t invent it – they worked within an existing commercial tradition.

No one owns “1940s pinup style” as intellectual property, just like no one owns Anime, Impressionism or Art Deco. Once a style becomes a style, it’s a reference point, an aesthetic vocabulary – not protectable IP.

A specific illustration by a specific artist can be protected, but no one can copyright a general visual approach, color palette, compositional tendencies, or the cultural aesthetic of an era.

When someone uses AI to draws on a broad stylistic tradition, it’s not that inherently different from a contemporary artist painting in the style of impressionism or a designer making art deco-inspired graphics. In either scenario, we are looking at a body of intelligence working within and reimagining a visual culture, then refining a work until the final piece is as cohesive, intentional, and as technically accurate as an imperfect human can reasonably expect it to be.

Sure, an AI Artist does not “craft” the work in the same way other artists have up until now. What becomes creatively interesting then, is how whatever vision the human had is infused into whatever style the AI is drawing from (via the prompt, model training, etc) – in the same way that an artist’s vision is translated through their preferences, taste and education, as well as the paint, Procreate brushes, or clay they chose to use.

In both cases, it’s a process of something that did not previously exist coming into existence through human intention, no matter the medium or technology. Of course, the tools used to create a work are interesting, but what I think is even more interesting is how we use them.

No, or All, Art is “Original”

To create, we inevitably destroy and reorganize what came before. That is the inherent process of creation, like stars exploding and turning into molecules that reconfigured themselves into our literal Earth and bodies. Humans absorb things that shape our vision and perspective and imagination, and as creative beings we transform what is alive inside us to grow what is becoming: our own “original” work, which ultimately becomes the stardust of someone else’s future creation. That’s beautiful, right?

No artist or art can be extracted from everything that has ever touched or influenced them and be called completely “original” – therefore the line around what constitutes “original work” and what is “copyrightable” has been blurry since time immemorial. Copyright law has always struggled with questions like: When does inspiration become imitation? How much can you borrow before it’s infringement? Who owns a style, a genre, a technique? Where’s the line between homage and theft?

These questions predate AI by centuries. The legal frameworks we have now (fair use, transformative work, substantial similarity tests) are all imperfect attempts to navigate this inherent murkiness. Yes, we need better frameworks for AI… but I would argue humans need better frameworks, period.

“You Should Hire Someone Who Can Actually Draw”

This statement completely ignores whether or not a business even has the capacity to hire an artist; the underlying assumption is that paying an artist to do work is inherently better than using “less good” or illegitimate AI-assisted art.

Side note: for creative people with inspiration that is not always matched by their cash flow – or for that matter, their depth or breadth of skills, time, or physical energy – AI can be an extremely helpful resource to create things that inspire joy or provide solutions. Yes, any artistic work would most certainly be enhanced by human creativity, but if the only option is to pay a human to do things you can’t do with money you don’t have, AI becomes extremely useful in many contexts where ideas are being developed.

Craftsmanship is inherently incredibly valuable, yes, but why should the value of art be in the labor of an artist, and not the outcome? Are they not both meaningful ways of appreciating and understanding art? This “craft-as-virtue” moral argument that one “should” pay people who “actually draw,” places the real value in someone laboring (or even suffering) to produce an art piece, not the art itself.

(Which – let me just say, if you think AI art is “easy,” you probably haven’t tried to make a piece with a really specific vision in mind. Crafting prompts to get things just right, working on iteration after iteration, getting stuck somewhere between desperate frustration and bursting into laughter at the absurdity of what AI is making, and finally refining pieces by hand actually takes a lot of time… especially if the composition is complex!) There is, quite often, actually a LOT of labor and suffering involved, which is why “prompt engineering” is legitimately becoming its own specialty / craft / skillset and people get paid to do it.)

Photography, now considered a powerful art form, wasn’t believed to be “real art” for a long time after the camera was invented because cameras allowed for the rapid, realistic capture of images with minimal manual effort. This contrasted sharply with the time-intensive craftsmanship required in traditional mediums like painting or sculpture. Photography was viewed as a mere mechanical reproduction lacking human imagination, skill, and “hand of the artist” required for “true” creative expression. But at some point, people decided it was a valid means of creative expression, and we see how photographers use this technology to convey their unique perspectives. The line between “tool” and “cheating” is arbitrary and historically contingent.

Building a skill set from the ground up is a valuable pursuit in and of itself. It’s incredible to see what artists create – with whatever tools they use – and watch artistic abilities improve and evolve over time. Yes, the medium and tools used to create an art piece are important. Yes, the creative process is beautiful, confusing, sometimes difficult, transformative. All of that is sacred.

But if AI allows people to create an idea (or some strange version of it) now, with the skills they currently have, why is that not valuable? Once we accept that tools and traditions evolve over time, the only remaining question is whether the art actually does what it is meant to do.

“Good” art is not measured by the method

All creations are meant to have impact, somewhere, somehow, for someone (even if it’s just the artist themselves) – that’s why they were asking to be made in the first place. So aside from all the background context, why does the finished piece matter? How does the work move you? Does it communicate something? Does it show care, intention, refinement?

Some AI-assisted work is breathtaking and some garbage is made entirely by hand. Yes, AI slop can be insulting to look at, but then so is traditional art that’s technically perfect but emotionally dead.

Good art creates emotion. Bad art is bad regardless of how it’s made. Elevating process over outcome is just gatekeeping dressed up as standards.

“You’re Profiting from [Insert Marginalized Group Here]”

Alright so the last argument is clearly not central to AI, but it’s a part of the larger discourse in the world today.

In the example, after insulting the work and getting nowhere, this person shifts tactics to identity policing and calling the work exploitative of a historically marginalized community. However:

This person doesn’t know the identity of the person they are accusing
Rather than as a means of connection, belonging is instead used as a weapon to make people outside the community bad, wrong, or exploitative

Putting art, AI, and advertising aside, this person had no evidence to support their claim. Sure, this might feel good in the moment, but does it actually protect or benefit said community? When people run out of substantive arguments, they reach for identity-based attacks, because shame is always the last tool in the arsenal. But using marginalized identities as props for ego battles is its own form of exploitation.

So you want to talk about exploitation…

Discourse, in general, gets stuck because of stuff like this.

Yes, there are real issues to be concerned about, and if you are helping to educate others, that is a valid mode of initiating change. However, if we let ego and identity run the show, we burn up a bunch of very useful creative energy on pointless arguments that don’t actually create the world we want to see.

Blaming, shaming and belittling do NOT create a free, fabulous, wonderful world – it just perpetuates more of the problems we already have.

You want to talk about exploitation in art? Where should we start?

Platforms taking 40%+ cuts from artists while providing minimal protection
Corporations using “exposure” to avoid paying creatives
The collapse of sustainable income for working artists
Algorithmic systems that reward copying and speed over originality
Workplaces that burn out illustrators while executives profit

Let’s talk about solutions

The obsession with purity (pure process, pure labor, pure authenticity) is a distraction, and in that distraction, we get nowhere closer to actually solving the problems at hand.

What I think is much more interesting than masochistically circling around pain points (which, if that is your thing, please enjoy) is approaching them creatively to discover how we can heal them. What about:

Building and supporting marketplaces or platforms run by creators themselves, with low fees, fair revenue sharing, and policies designed to actually protect artists
Developing creative escrow systems, where payment is securely held and only released when agreed-upon work is delivered, removing the “exposure bait” entirely
Making it easier for artists to diversify revenue ecosystems, so they can mix print sales, memberships, licensing, workshops, and digital products to build multiple sustainable income streams
Curating discovery feeds that reward originality, and rewarding algorithms that surface work based on uniqueness and quality, not speed or virality, breaking the “copy-first” cycle
Exploring profit-sharing and co-ownership models, where artists receive a meaningful share of project profits, linking compensation to success and reducing exploitation

Using AI to make something thoughtfully is not the problem. In fact, we need more thoughtful people to be able to share their thoughtful thoughts, so if AI makes it easier for those people, then that’s actually a great thing! The problem is systemic devaluation of creativity, and that existed long before AI.

Yes, the power of AI is scary – but what if we use that fear to create something beautiful, instead of tear each other down? What if we shifted our focus on what really matters, say, our desires for ourselves, other humans, our planet, our future? What if we saw AI (or any other tool for that matter) as a potential resource that can help, rather than a weapon that can only harm?

And what if we acknowledged the power of the humans using the tool, rather than externalizing our own creative life force onto technology we (humans) created? What if we approached the problems we see with curiosity and creativity, rather than just trying to shut things or other people down?

Some examples…

Unhelpful: “It’s unethical to use AI”
Helpful: “What models are you using, what are you making with them, and are you honest about it?”

Unhelpful: “AI images are meaningless slop”
Helpful: “What is the purpose of this image? Does the work achieve what it’s trying to achieve?”

Unhelpful: “You should suffer more to make real art”
Helpful: “Do you care enough to make your art mean something to someone?”

Valid concerns vs unconscious anxiety

The AI panic is partly valid concern about technology’s impact on creative livelihoods. But I also think it’s become a convenient container for deeper anxieties: fear of obsolescence or irrelevance, that what someone spent years mastering might not matter anymore, fear that talent or value is more subjective than we want to believe. And instead of sitting with those fears (processing them, adapting and finding new ground) some people just externalize them as moral crusades.

People do this because, in some ways, it’s easy. It’s easier to call someone a thief than examine why their work bothers you, or police technology rather than ask why your own work isn’t connecting with your intended audience. It’s “easier” to feel comfy in a cozy coat of self-righteousness than to brave the perceived “difficult” work of undergoing the transformation of emotional, personal, and ultimately creative growth.

And it sure is easy to do the anti-social work of picking on individuals, instead of organizing and collaborating with them to create systemic, lasting change 😉

The real threat to creative culture

Hi everyone, it’s 2025 and I have a secret to tell you: the real threat to creative culture is the same thing it’s always been… devaluing creativity itself!!! i.e.

Reframing skill as innate talent and ignoring the work and time needed to cultivate it
Positioning creative pursuits as passion or indulgence rather necessary contribution
Extracting creative value while routing rewards to patrons, publishers, or platforms
Celebrating outputs while hiding the struggle, iteration, and failure behind them
Elevating sanctioned art forms while dismissing others as craft, folk, or commerce
Rewarding volume and immediacy and favoring it over slowness and deliberation
Canonizing and venerating dead creators while living ones struggle to get by
Disguising mediocrity as virtue, defending bad art made the “good” way
Framing burnout and precarity as personal failure, not systemic neglect

Societies consume creativity eagerly but organize themselves to avoid paying its true cost in time, money, recognition, and care. AI didn’t create that dynamic, but it definitely exposes it in new ways. As creatives, what we do with that information matters. We can either:

Keep attacking each other to manage our own anxiety, or
Focus on making better work, building better systems, supporting each other, and holding space for multiple paths to a diversity of high-quality outcomes

Personally, I know how I would rather to spend my time… 🤷🏼‍♀️

A Message for People Navigating This

If you’re using AI in your work and being harassed for it…

You don’t owe anyone a defense. If you’re disclosing it, if you’re refining it, if you’re making something good – you’re doing nothing wrong and the world needs you to be making things from that place of genuine creative desire, care and good faith. Keep going.
The loudest voices are often the most insecure. People who are secure in their craft don’t need to tear down others to prove their worth.
Quality is your best argument. Good work lands in the body. Focus on creating that and let the work speak for itself. People can feel the difference between slop and care.
Build your own container. You don’t have to tolerate hostile environments. You can create or join spaces where the conversation is about the work, not performative purity tests.

The person who messaged me wasn’t protecting anything, they were displacing their own internal emotions by finding external enemies. And, instead of building something they love up, they were using their precious time and energy to tear someone down. And that pattern – repeated across thousands of similar interactions – is doing far more damage to creative culture than AI ever could.

Can you imagine how beautiful the world could be, if we knew the power of that energy, learned how to harness it, and instead of using it to destroy, turned it towards creating?

Authors Note: This writing emerged from a real exchange with another Etsy seller and the reflections it sparked. The essay was developed through dialogue with Claude AI (Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5), which helped me organize thoughts I’d expressed in conversation and provided approximately 10-20% of argument articulation and structure through my direction. The remaining 80-90% represents original writing, including the opening narrative, substantial rewrites of key sections, and additional perspective. I refined, expanded, and personalized the final piece in my own voice. I believe in transparent attribution when AI tools contribute to creative work, both to acknowledge the collaborative process and to recognize that AI systems are built upon the collective knowledge and labor of countless human contributors.