Artificial Intelligence is a complicated topic that could and should be discussed at length, but for the sake of this blog post, I’ll keep it brief. I once had a friend liken AI to a hammer, and I always appreciated that simile. A hammer can be used as a tool to create amazing things, but unfortunately, hammers can also be used as weapons.

I feel like the current AI trend is veering more toward the “hammer as a weapon” path. WordPress, the hosting platform for this website, rolled out a few AI options in the past few months, and I have been exploring them. I’ve also explored other AI technologies like OpenAI, and my current feelings are “meh.”

The free AI technology isn’t a very good writer or artist, so I find that working with the software can be somewhat frustrating as I have to guide it more and more to create what I envision. And given the massive amounts of energy and freshwater artificial intelligence wastes per query, I do not want to contribute to that continued waste, as well as the overall dumbing-down of art and society.

While I never used AI to write for Happy Hagfish (because where would the fun have been in that??) I did occasionally generate images for blog posts. But, not anymore. Until I feel like the AI software is less energy-intensive (and less likely to commit outright theft of other people’s works), I want to avoid using it. So to make up for the AI-generated images of the past, I took it upon myself to make my own artwork.

The only problem is that I’m a terrible artist. I have the hand control of someone drawing while in the back of an Uber speeding over a field of potholes, and despite the fact that I literally taught digital design (that is not an exaggeration), I subconsciously prefer the tacky color palettes favored by most Yaiyais.

So with that in mind, I did my best to create this new artwork, and I will continue to try to create more crappy artwork to replace the even crappier AI-generated artwork currently plaguing the world. Until AI gets better, the art scene just got a little worse.

I’m sorry it’s come to this.