Hey friends. With the advent of AI, I thought I’d take a moment and share a couple of thoughts.

AI can be useful. I’ve used it for menu planning, interior design ideas, lesson planning, and brainstorming sessions. I love harnessing its quick capacity for simple tasks. Technology as a servant is very awesome indeed.

However, I’ve also seen it used in deceptive ways. It seems harmless, but it’s not. With a carefully worded prompt and a couple of clicks, you can create art, music, videos and all sorts of fantastic things. The problem is that every time you purchase, like, or share something that is AI-generated, a real artist is being disregarded in the process.

Someone sent me a Christian song they discovered, and something about it felt a little off, so I did some research and found a YouTube channel less than one year old with several genres of music. Each of them had a somewhat flawless quality of production, and I realized the song had been AI-generated.

Another friend sent me some art they found to be intricate and beautiful. Usually, a body of work is shared over months and years of exploring and creating. This artist had posted everything they created within the span of five months. Everything was a bit overly perfect, and I came to the conclusion that this artist’s name was just a pseudonym for AI-generated work.

Then there’s the time a friend sent me a heartfelt story that I found intriguing. After taking the time to look up the author, I discovered their name and story had been shared hundreds of thousands of times within five days. I could find no other associated press surrounding that person or their story, but I did find a GoFundMe for that business. AI. Again. 

Did you know there’s an entire social network dedicated to AI-generated photos and videos? It’s called Sora. The thing is, that AI-generated content is not just staying on that platform. It’s migrating to other places like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.. People are using AI to create content that looks realistic, sometimes framing the video as a security camera on someone’s porch, because we’re less likely to question whether it’s fake content or not.  

I get it. A lot of these videos can be amusing. But if we give our time and attention to something that’s not even real is it worth it? It’s one thing if we know we are looking at something fake, but most of these videos are passed off as if they are real, and I find that problematic. People are becoming incensed, angry and irritated over situations that never happened, and that can turn into a massive waste of time, an unnecessary emotional drain. 

I love technology but AI is not the neutral tool that some are trying to pass it off to be. People are using AI to scrape websites of artists to create new works in that artist’s signature style. If a human does it, we call it 

Copyright infringement

Plagiarism

Theft of intellectual property 

When AI does it, people step back, marvel, and call it progress.

Sometimes I think we’re so eager for progress – so eager to see what new thing we can create or design – that we never stop to question if it’s wise or not. Yes, those images are flawless. Those words are perfectly crafted. That song is catchy, but do we really want to funnel money to tech elites instead of soulful creators?

Others with more nefarious intentions are pulling photos of other people’s children from the Internet and modifying them to create indecent photos and videos to share on the dark web. Some people may justify this by saying, “Hey, at least it’s not real children!” but it’s rare for someone to feed a lust like that without filling the need to do more.

Years ago, we imagined virtual reality would mean everyone would walk around with some sort of VR headset, viewing other places, other worlds. However, it arrived a little slower, and it actually looks like a room full of people staring at their phones. We are currently living in a time where we see more polished faces and bodies online than people in our own flesh-and-blood lives. One person even went so far as to say this is the first generation of people who will carry more memories of other people’s lives than their own. Wow.

So what can you do? AI is evolving so quickly that it will soon become nearly impossible to tell if what you’re seeing was created by a human or code. So… pause before you share and take a moment to ask: do I trust this source? How old is the account? Some writers I follow have (thankfully) taken a stand against AI by refusing to use it and publicly affirming – Hey, this is me! There’s a human behind these words! Take a moment to do a quick search. Ask, would two bull moose really take the time to tip someone’s car into a ditch? No, they wouldn’t. Think critically about what you see and hear, and choose to follow voices that have a soul behind them.