Why I Minimize My Use of AI

AI is a pretty hot topic right now. And yes, I can see the appeal. However, what over shadows that appeal are all the downsides. I’ll start off by saying I do think AI has its purpose and its place. And I’m sure it will only continue to get more advanced. But as a graphic designer, an artist, and someone who care about our planet, I try to steer clear of AI as much as possible – especially when it comes to art.

Please note, I’m also aware I am not the AI expert here and I know some people will strongly disagree with some of this, but here’s my 2 cents for whoever wants to listen.

AI Cannot Replace True Art

Art is beautiful because it’s something humans create. That’s right. HUMANS. Not artificial intelligence. Just like a song it’s beautiful and meaningful because someone wrote the lyrics. Someone composed the music. People came together to produce the music. Which is then listened to by people around the world. It really brings people together. Music is a form of art, just like a painting, an illustration, house design, or the beautiful landscaping of a garden. The human touch is what makes it so special. Why would we ever wanna get rid of that?

Why I don’t Intentionally Use AI in My Designs

I do not intentionally use AI when I design, but I know it’s automatically in some parts of programs, so I won’t make a blanket statement saying I don’t ever use it. But I do avoid it as much as possible. One reason why is because I believe I am a better designer without it (and the other big reason is environmental – see further down the page). I really think if I started to use AI in my designs, it would slowly become a crutch and I would loose my sense of creativity. I became a designer because I love creating. I don’t want to input commands into a computer. Also, I can say that I have played with it a couple of times out of curiosity and per a client’s request. And from my little experience, I have found it is not quite intelligent yet. In fact, sometimes the results are absolutely hilarious. So it’s definitely good for a good laugh.

Sometimes AI is Inevitable

I’m just getting around to posting this in April of 2026, but I started writing it in the summer of 2025. As I picked the draft back up, I immediately saw several glaring mistakes and thought “what in the world? I don’t usually have so many typing errors in a first draft,” and it seriously made me question my sanity. But then I got to this paragraph and remembered that when I first started writing this, I had a broken finger. So I was using voice to text, which is powered by AI. When I had the broken finger, typing was difficult and slow. So, yes I found that technology useful and I’m grateful voice to text technology exists. And I can imagine there are many disabled people that utilize AI for tasks that make everyday life easier for them. So, it certainly has its good uses.

I Find AI to Be Deceiving

If you ask me, AI is very deceiving. Some people are now using it to write and illustrate books (among other things), and they pass it off as their own. People who use it for design, but have little or no design knowledge, ask it to do something and might initially think “hey this looks great.” But if you were to give that design to a designer, they could probably point out a bunch of issues that make it look cheap, incomplete or just low quality.

Some authors that I’ve seen try to use AI for their books get pretty poor results. And more recently, a good example, is an author I spoke with who had an idea of a story they wanted to bring to life. They wrote the story, but felt it didn’t fit their target age group as well as it should. So they put it into an AI engine, asking it to write it for the appropriate age group. They then had AI create a character and use this in their book. Then they had AI design and format the book. Care to guess what the results were?

That’s right, they weren’t great. This person was not a designer, yet luckily, they could still see the flaws. The character AI designed was not consistent throughout the book and the formatting was all over the place. It used many different fonts in different sizes and it was not consistent. This person also explained that they spent many many hours inputting very specific language and doing many rounds to get it this far. So I guess what I’m trying to say is it sounded like a huge amount of effort on their part, to create something they weren’t able to use in the end. And had they thought it was usable, they would’ve then published a book that would’ve probably been very unsuccessful and ridiculed for being a poor AI design.

AI Takes What It Wants

Let’s not forget, when it comes to the world of art and design, AI has to learn these behaviors of creating. So it’s no longer something that was specifically programmed to perform a task, but now programmed to learn certain behaviors like design or other forms of art. So, it has to take ideas from somewhere. And since AI didn’t create art first, it’s taking it from artists and designers. Without their permission typically. I saw a post from a photographer once about a photograph she created years ago. The photograph was of a model covered in little flowers all around her face. She had found someone who had re-created her image via AI. She explained how her many many hours of hard work, tediously picking and laying these flowers around this face, followed by a very professional, elegant photograph of this arrangement was now being used by someone who simply popped her image in to an AI engine to re-create something similar. Sounds like plagiarism to me. And now, that AI has learned her style of photography. It’s now a part of the system and can be used to generate other images. So not only was her many hours on this one photograph taken, but her specific style of photography and her many hours of learning the art of photography, and finding her own style, are now a part of the system.

This is also an issue in the world of writing. Writers who have spent years of schooling, years of practice, are now being pushed aside to have AI write things that they used to write. This is their art form that’s now being replaced.

I saw a meme several months ago that said something to the effect of “they have AI all wrong because it’s replacing things we want to be doing, like creating art, when it should be used to do things like clean our kitchen, so that we have time to create more art!” And I couldn’t agree more. I do think AI has its place, and it can be really useful for some things and I’m sure it’s going to get better, but I do not think it should be used to replace things like art. That is a very human activity that brings meaning into our world and connection across the globe, so why would we want to replace that with artificial intelligence?

AI Has the Potential to Be Dangerous

I recently read about how AI is learning to “people please”. So if you input something and don’t like the answer and keep pushing towards what you do want to hear, it is learning that people want to hear what they want to hear. Meaning, please the person. But that won’t get you clear, unbiased answers. There are also studies showing how AI can be harmful to our critical thinking skills. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to increase my brain power…not decrease it.

There have also been concerns about how AI can grab images of yourself (or your children) and use them however it wants. Think about somebody using your child’s photo to do whatever they want with it. A social experiment was done with a family that posted their daughter online a lot. This team took 1 photo of the daughter, put it into an AI engine and created a full video showing her as an adult speaking to her parents. Needless to say, the parents were shocked. Many people have no idea what could be done with one image and advanced AI technology. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4WZ_k0vUDM

AI is Harming the Environment

So if all that still has you thinking “well, it’s inevitable and it’s just easier,” maybe consider the environmental impact. Despite everything I’ve already mentioned, I think one of the worst parts about AI is that it is harmful to our planet*. The data centers use massive amounts of water, energy and resources like copper. So here we are, trying to help our planet by recycling, driving electric cars, using less coal, using less straws and now it feels like we’re undoing all of that and making things even worse.

So while I know some AI is necessary and we’re not going to fully get rid of it, I think of it like plastic or waste. The less you can use it, the better. And the next time you have the urge to jump on the latest AI trend and make your family into Disney characters, or pretend you’re Jesus. Maybe think about how that is harming our planet. Maybe think of it as taking gallons of water and dumping it down the drain, for no reason. Because personally, I think we can help our Earth by reducing our use of AI.

*Resources:
https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/stem/ai-environmental-impact