The following is an addendum I am putting in my book I recently written:
“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one’s pen.” Leo Tolstoy
Every line, every word, every paragraph, and even the order of the works in this book, had taken countless hours to write and rewrite, arrange and rearrange, in order for me to express the full nuance, accuracy, and authenticity of what my inner soul and heart yearned so long to share with the world. When I write, any time my message felt slightly off of what my heart or soul deemed true—from what was directed from within—I would discard the message and check in with myself and meditate for the real inner message. I would even change a punctuation point to ensure a message was wholly inwardly congruent. Authenticity with my inner self goes beyond the mere words on the page and must align with the feeling and thinking behind the words, which are the invisible parts of my work behind the words themselves. For me, they need to be as real and authentic as my work itself for my work exist as a testament to my truth. The way AI is used on artists’ work is the antithesis of this sacred process.
I request that none of my work be put through an AI machine. I understand you may not be ill-intended, but this practice, without the explicit permission of the artist, can be very painful, thoughtless, and disrespectful to the creator. It is sacrilegious to their own voice, which they carefully crafted and sacrificed time and energy for to be guzzled down by a machine in less than a minute. People have done that to my work and it hurts.
I respect and deeply hold sacred the gift for writing and any art, which for me must go through a comprehensive internal process to be real. Even if you are inspired by other sources, everything gets channeled into what is fully an internal and human process patiently nurtured by loving hands of an artist—a creator who cares. In fact, doing so shows respect towards those who inspired you in comparison to throwing work into a thoughtless machine that is technologically futuristic but anachronistic in human development. At a spiritual level, I believe in providing for the world what you were meant to give, which is your authentic and real voice: bare-naked as it is! To do otherwise, is to forfeit yourself and your humanity to social conditioning, and unfortunately today, to thoughtless statistical probability by a machine which, similar to society, tells all of us how to not think.
In solidarity to artists and for the safety of the world, I do not use AI in my work on principle. It is not that the artistic process is a threat by AI because AI can do it: AI can never give people the timeless blessing of the artistic process. It can never come in lieu of going internally into yourself, fulling dissolving your soul into the cocoon of the creative process, and coming out the other side of the process garnering the new power to fly in terms of your ability to think and feel. AI, on the other hand, projects a mask and armor of strength, but it really weakens people underneath, by projecting false power and ability. It treats them like lab animals pressing a button for dopamine hits. It is an insult to the artistic process and what it stands for and diminishes people’s ability to engage in it.
The artistic process is really threatened by AI because it causes people to lose touch with it. AI developers over-hype AI and discourage people to give up on their dreams to be an artist by making false and superficial assumptions of AI’s ability to replace artists. Though it is clear it does not replace the artistic process, it makes artists unemployed by valuing the dollar over it. It squeezes artists out of spaces where they want to share their real voices by producing countless of soulless pieces. It makes people more out of touch with authenticity, genuineness, and depth. Rather than truly create meaning through a transformational process, it instead spats out results, remixes, and thus generates a glib relation to life and what makes it meaningful. Authentic artistic expression, and authentic self-expression that is non-artistic, are essential for humanity’s development and growth for generations to come. We need to know what is true and authentic from what is not, or else we are lost. Our development and growth cannot be led by a machine that will save us, but from our own inner confrontation with ourselves.
My concern is how AI has made people search for meaning and answers outside of themselves rather than within, the latter being what the artistic process is symbolic of at the deepest level. Combined with ravaging the world’s energy and water supply, misinformation, erosion of trust and loss of authenticity, identity theft, psychosis, destruction of the internet, corporate greed, disruption of the education system, unfair job displacement and insecurity, and a myriad of other issues that all come back to the loss of humanity, figuratively and literally, I do not support generative AI.
