Kaylie Edwards: [00:00:00] I think one of the hardest things to admit online now is that your opinion about AI is complicated, because people seem to want you to choose a side. You are either completely for it, using every new tool and telling everyone that they need to keep up, or you are completely against it and believe it should not touch any part of a creative business at all.
And I do not sit comfortably in either of those places. I was excited by generative AI when it first became easily available. I played with it. I thought it was clever. I could see how it might help someone like me juggling a business, client work, family life, chronic health conditions, and an art practice I was desperately trying to find my way back to.
But over the years, the novelty has worn off The more I have seen AI-generated images, videos, products, even entire businesses appearing everywhere, the more [00:01:00] uncomfortable I have become. Sometimes it does not just make me uncomfortable, sometimes it makes me genuinely angry. Not because I suddenly believe every use of AI is wrong, I really don't.
I still use AI in parts of my business. I would be lying if I pretended otherwise. But what has changed is that I no longer look at all AI use as the same thing. I have become much more aware of what is being replaced, what is being hidden, and how much low-effort content is being poured into creative marketplaces, and it's such a shame, and what that does to the people who have spent years and years learning how to make something themselves
So this episode is not me telling you the correct position to have. It is me explaining how mine changed, where I have landed for now, and why I think we need to be much more honest about the difference between using AI to support a creative business and using it to [00:02:00] manufacture the thing you are claiming as your creativity Hello, and welcome to the Creative Juggle Joy Podcast, the show for artists, makers, and creative businesses I'm Kaylie Edwards, founder of Spellweaver Creative Studio, where I help artists, makers, and creative business owners with gentle marketing, email strategy, and systems that help a business grow without taking over your entire life.
If you listened to the previous episode with me and Delores, you will have heard us talk about what is changing across the creative industry, AI labels on social platforms, the difference between generated and assisted content, the pressure on marketplaces, and why human-made work is beginning to stand out in a new way.
I'm not going to repeat that whole conversation today. This is more personal part I deliberately held back This is about my own relationship with AI and the fact that it is not the same relationship I had with it a few years ago
I want to begin honestly [00:03:00] because it would be very easy to rewrite my own history and pretend I was suspicious of generative from the beginning. I wasn't. When these tools first became accessible to ordinary people, there was a real novelty to them. And to be honest, the outputs weren't the best at the beginning.
And you could really tell if it was AI generated, you could type a few words into a box and watch an image appear. Even when the hands were strange and the lettering was nonsense and objects melted into each other, there was still that feeling of how has it done that?
It felt playful, it felt experimental, and it felt a little bit like getting access to a piece of futuristic technology we had only seen in films. And I could immediately see practical possibilities. I've always had more ideas than I have time, energy or technical skill to execute. That is probably true for a lot of multi-passionate creatives like myself.
I can picture something in my head, but getting it from head into finished visual is another matter entirely sometimes. [00:04:00] I was also trying to run Spellweaver Creative Studio, support clients, create content, think about products, be present with my family and manage health conditions. That means my energy is not predictable.
I do not get a clean eight-hour day in which I can actually casually spend three hours designing one Instagram carousel. So when a tool appeared that could help turn an idea into something visible quickly, of course I could see the appeal. I played with coloring page ideas and clip art ideas to use in my own designs.
I experimented with images. I looked at what it could produce and thought about the ways it might make creative work or marketing easier. And don't get me wrong, there were so many frustrations and , I do not think I was alone in that. A lot of people were trying it because it was new.
There was not yet the same volume of AI imagery surrounding us and many of the consequences were not as visible to an [00:05:00] ordinary user. At that point I was looking mainly at what the tool could do for me. I was not yet looking properly at what happened when millions of people used it to generate millions of things at speed.
That was the part that changed everything The novelty wore off when the volume became impossible to ignore. A single generated image can feel like an experiment. Thousands of people generating hundreds of images each and uploading them as products becomes an industry problem. That is where my perspective started to shift.
One of the clearest examples for me was coloring books. Coloring books are not just a stack of black outlines. A good one needs a concept, a consistent style, usable line work, sensible spaces to color, variety between pages, and an understanding of the person who will actually use it. Even a relatively simple book takes time to plan, draw, clean up, format, and check.
Then marketplaces began filling with books that all [00:06:00] appeared to have been generated very quickly and uploaded in bulk. You could often see the problems before opening them. Repeated ideas, inconsistent styles, strange anatomy strange objects and things, objects joining together, decorative details that did not make any sense, lines that looked impressive in a thumbnail but would be frustrating to color.
Why so much texture would need to be in a coloring book, I do not know. And I've seen all the comments on coloring books that I found on Amazon. I love doing coloring books. I have done - for years adult coloring books and doing coloring books as a kid And trying to find decent coloring books now is so difficult
And I've seen the frustration from so many other people who are duped into buying these really crappy made AI-generated coloring books. Yes, obviously they're getting better as people learn how to prompt them, but most people don't [00:07:00] even have the time to do that, and they won't because it's fast and easy for them to make some
Quick Cash
You know and seeing so many crappy coloring books on Amazon and other places, that started to make me angry because the competition was no longer simply another person who had found a faster drawing method. It was volume competing with care. Someone could spend weeks or months developing a thoughtful book, while somebody else could generate a large collection, upload it quickly, and move straight on to the next trending subject.
And the issue for me was not just that the AI had been used, it was the business model growing around it. Produce as much as possible, as quickly as possible, with as little personal investment as possible, then rely on search volume and trends to make the sales. That is not the kind of creative business I want to build, and people shouldn't be wanting to build that kind of business.
And it is not only coloring books. I began seeing clip art packs, wall art, [00:08:00] journals, print-on-demand products, children's content, stock imagery, and social accounts built almost entirely around generating that output with AI. Then came the videos. At first, an AI video might stop you because it was unusual.
Now I often notice the same highly polished movement, the impossible transformation, the overly sentimental animal story, or the scene designed purely to make you stare for five seconds before realizing none of it actually happened. That constant flood has changed my response. Instead of thinking, "That is clever," I increasingly think, "Why does this need to even exist?
What is it adding? Who made a meaningful choice here? And is this communicating something, or is it simply more material created to hold our attention for a few seconds?" I know that can sound harsh. There are thoughtful filmmakers and artists experimenting with these tools intentionally. I'm not saying everything made with generative AI is automatically worthless.
There are [00:09:00] plenty of new AI softwares like Higgsfield or OpenArt that do a very good job of, creating videos
But you also need to be able to use it properly and have a direction for them. I don't understand some of the direction that people use. I'm talking about the sheer amount of content that has no real reason to exist beyond feeding an algorithm, filling a marketplace, or trying to make quick money. That is where my anger sits now.
It is less about one person testing an image generator and more about creatives who're being treated as infinite raw material that can be produced, uploaded, and discarded without any creative input
It stopped being internet issue and appeared in ordinary life. Another shift happened when I started noticing generated imagery
Away from the obvious AI accounts and online business spaces. I live in a small village in North Wales in the UK. It is one of the highest villages in Wales. We do not even have a shop. [00:10:00] We have a community newsletter put together by people giving their own time, volunteers, to keep residents informed about what is happening in our local village.
And I started AI-generated event graphics appearing in the bulletin that we get once a month. And that really stayed with me because it showed how completely normal this technology has now become. It was no longer something happening in a Silicon Valley announcement or an online marketing group or an Etsy debate.
It had reached the kind of local bulletin you might pick up to find out about a community event. My reaction was obviously complicated. Part of me noticed the visual immediately. Once you become familiar with common AI traits, you start seeing them everywhere. Sometimes it is the lighting.
Sometimes it's overly smooth or dream-like finish, or you can tell similar fonts that AI uses or the colors. Sometimes it is tiny detail that do not quite make sense. [00:11:00] But I was not angry at the volunteers who made the newsletter. They're giving their time, they're doing it for free.
They work full-time. They're doing this off their own back for the village. They probably do not have the design budget. They needed an image for an event and found a quick way to make one. They may not even see this as an ethical debate. They may simply see it as another tool in whatever software they are already using.
And that matters because it reminded me that context matters also. It is easy to sit online and say, "They should have hired an illustrator or a designer." But hired with what money? Managed by whom? Or on what deadline? It is easy to say, "They should have made the graphic themselves." But what if the person organizing the event, writing the copy, collecting the dates, laying out the newsletter and distributing it, is already doing all of that for free?
I can dislike the wider direction of generated imagery without turning every person who uses it into a villain. That distinction has become [00:12:00] important to me, and it should be for most people
And why I still use AI in my business. Here is the part that can make these conversations uncomfortable. I still use AI. I use it to help me work through ideas. I use it to organize information, turn messy notes into clearer structure, identify gaps, draft starting points, repurpose my content and my clients' content, and reduce some of the repetitive work involved in running a business.
It can help with email outlines, product descriptions, titles, SEO ideas, content planning and systems. I do not accept everything it produces. Quite often I disagree with it, rewrite it, or have to pull the humanity back into something that has become far too polished, and I always need to fact-check because some of the facts it comes up with aren't right or they're outdated But it has got better the more the AI has learnt about me and my business.
So sometimes I don't have to [00:13:00] fully edit something completely 'cause it's already got my stories and the way I speak in it. But I'm also using it for automation because that is the biggest game changer for me as, as a small solo business entrepreneur. I want to do a second business, but I can't do that if my current business is taking so much time away from me 'cause I'm all- doing it all manually.
So I'm using AI to create automations and workflows to streamline and to earn my time back
But it also helps me get past the blank page. For somebody in my position, that matters. I'm a work-at-home mom. I run my own business, I support clients, I co-host this podcast. I'm trying to rebuild my own art practice and develop a second art-based side of my business. My partner works night shifts. Family life does not arrange itself around my content calendar, and my health can change the amount [00:14:00] I'm able to do from one day to the next Time is not an abstract productivity problem for me.
It is a real limit. If AI helps me turn an hour of staring at a blank screen into 20 minutes of editing a rough draft, that can be the difference between email being sent and it sitting unfinished for another month. I also understand why a solo creative might use a generated image for a temporary marketing graphic.
If you are promoting a workshop, a live session, or a free event, you may need something branded and eye-catching today. You may not have the money to commission an illustrator or a designer. You may not have the suitable photographs, and spending half a day making one graphic means half a day not making the artwork or teaching the course or serving the customers the event is actually for.
I do not think that automatically makes somebody a fraud. I do think the context should be clear. If the image could reasonably be mistaken for your own artwork, say what it [00:15:00] is You know, do not use a generated illustration to imply that you painted it, and do not build your identity around a style that generator borrowed from somebody else.
And think about whether there is a human alternative that would work just as well, a photograph of you, a detail from the real project, a work in progress, a simple type-based graphic or something already in your brand library. But I also refuse to pretend that every one-person business has the budget of a large company.
There is a difference between a solo creator using a generated decorative graphic because they are stretched beyond capacity and a large brand replacing paid artists at scale because it can produce more for less. Both choices can be questioned. They are not identical choices. The line becomes much harder when AI touches the artwork.
Business support is the easier part of my position to explain. The more difficult part is how AI has sometimes entered my own creative process. [00:16:00] There have been occasions when I have generated an image as a reference because I struggle to visualize a pose, an animal or a particular composition. I have then used that reference to help find an outline or solve a problem before rebuilding the piece with my own line work, colors, decisions, and details.
I want to be precise here. I'm not describing typing a prompt, receiving a finished illustration, changing two colors, and I call it my artwork. That is not what I'm saying. I'm describing using an image as one step in figuring out how to draw something I could not quite resolve Even then, I know this is controversial for some artists.
Some artists will say that because the generated reference was trained from other people's work, it should not be used anywhere in an art process. I understand that position. I am not going to tell somebody they have to be comfortable with my boundary simply because I have explained it. But my own thinking has become stricter over time.
I would not take another [00:17:00] photographer's image, trace it exactly, and then pretend the result came entirely from my own imagination. The fact that a generated image does not present me with one obvious photographer to credit does not mean I should stop thinking about originality and transformation.
So I ask myself questions. Am I using this to understand a problem, or am I borrowing the finished creative decisions? If somebody saw the reference and my final piece beside each other, would it be obvious that I had made a substantial decision of my own? Could I use several legitimate references instead, including my own photographs, public domain material, or licensed reference libraries?
Am I learning from the process or using the tool to avoid learning a skill? I'm building my art practice up, and I'm trying to learn more skills, so if I am using AI to avoid doing something like creating a background, then that's different, isn't it? And would [00:18:00] I feel comfortable explaining exactly what I did to a customer? That last question is usually the clearest one. If I feel the need to hide the process, then I probably already know I have crossed my own line. Where I have landed is that I do not want AI generating my finished artwork. I want the shapes, lines, color choices, character, and final composition to come from me.
I'm also trying to rely less on generated references as I rebuild my skills, because part of returning to art is accepting that I will not be brilliant at every element immediately. I need to practice. I need to make awkward drawings. I need to let my hand and eye learn, rather than asking technology to remove every uncomfortable stage.
One thing that I have always struggled with is hands. When I'm doing small characters, I've always really struggled with doing the hands. I can create a really detailed sketch of my own hand or somebody else's hand from a photo. I can do that, but when it comes to actually drawing characters, that is a struggle for [00:19:00] me
That does not mean I believe artists must work without digital tools. I use Affinity Designer, Canva, and other software. Digital art has never meant pressing one button while the computer makes all the decisions. The question for me is whether technology was involved. The question is where the creative authorship lives
And why AI-only creative businesses now bother me so much. This is the part where my feelings have become strongest. I'm increasingly angry and frustrated when I see businesses based almost entirely on generated imagery or video presenting themselves in the same spaces as artists, illustrators, makers, and designers who have built a practice.
I'm not talking about somebody using AI to write a product description or make a workshop graphic. I'm talking about the generated output being the product, the portfolio, the content, and the supposed creative identity of the business The person may be skilled at prompting, spotting [00:20:00] trends, and packaging products.
Those are skills, but they are not the same skills as illustration, photography, animation, pattern design, or craft, and I think customers deserve language that makes that difference clear. What frustrates me is when the presentation deliberately blurs it. When an account calls itself an art studio, but every image has been generated by AI, when a person sells hand-drawn style clip art that was not drawn by hand, when dozens of products appear in completely different visual styles because there is no underlying artistic practice connecting them.
When emotional videos are generated purely to drive views but are presented in a way that encourages people to believe the event was actually real, or when people who have built an enormous catalog in weeks start teaching traditional artists that the problem is simply that they are not producing fast enough.
That is the part I find really insulting Artists are already under pressure to post constantly, release constantly, chase [00:21:00] trends, and turn every interest into a product. Generative AI has made the possible volume almost limitless, then placed human creators into the same feeds and search results and told them to compete.
But humans cannot and should not create - at machine volume. The time in human work is not inefficiency, it's part of a value. The sketch that did not work, the color palette that changed, the repeated motif that took five attempts, the character building, the physical material that behaved differently than expected, or the line that carries the movement of a person's hand, those things are not faults that need to be automated away.
And I think that is why I am now so drawn to work where I can see the person in it, not fake imperfection added because it is trending, real evidence of decisions, revisions, and a point of view And I've changed my mind, but I have not moved to an extreme. It would be neat to end this by saying I used to be pro-AI and now I'm anti-AI, but that would be not [00:22:00] true.
I am much more skeptical than I was. I am more protective of human-made work. I'm angrier about generated products flooding markets and about businesses profiting from the appearance of creativity without actually being transparent about their process. I'm also more aware that useful business assistance and generated creative output are not the same thing.
I also follow and respect creatives who use AI behind the scenes for systems, content planning, SEO, product naming, titles and descriptions, while keeping it completely away from the artwork itself, like Mandy Cochran from Amanda Grace Designs. She is a great example that has helped me see what a clearer boundary can look like.
That approach makes sense to me because it protects the part only they can make, while reducing some of the admin that can stop them from making it, and that is the direction I increasingly want for myself. I want technology to give me more time to be an artist [00:23:00] and business owner, not to impersonate the artist for me.
I want it to help organize the thoughts, not decide what I think, and I want it to help me start a draft, not flatten my voice into something that sounds like everybody else. And I want it to remove repetitive work, not remove the meaningful struggle through which a skill is developed.
Those distinctions may keep changing as the tools change, and as I learn more. I reserve the right to change my mind again. I actually think we should all be allowed to do that. And changing your position after seeing new consequences is not hypocrisy. Pretending you have never been uncertain is not integrity What I would ask another creative to think about.
I do not want to finish with a list of rules because I am not the person who gets to set them for everybody. But if you are unsure where your own line is, these are the questions I am now asking myself. First, what is the customer actually buying from me? If they're buying my eye, my drawing, my [00:24:00] style, or my craftsmanship, then those should be genuinely coming from me.
And second, what part of the process is the tool replacing? Is it replacing repetitive admin, or is it replacing the central creative skill the product appears to represent? And third, am I being clear enough that a reasonable person would understand how the main thing was made? Fourth, would I make the same choice if I had to explain it openly rather than quietly hoping nobody asked?
Fifth, am I using AI because it supports the business I want, or because the promise of speed has distracted me from building something with a real point of view? And finally, is there a simpler human option? Not every marketing graphic needs an elaborate illustration. A photograph, a sketch, a close-up, or a piece of typography, or a deliberately simple layout may communicate more trust than another glossy generated image.
Sometimes the pressure to look polished is what [00:25:00] sends us towards these tools in the first place. Maybe part of the answer is allowing our businesses to look as human as they actually are. And don't be afraid to make mistakes
My relationship with AI has changed because the world around it has changed. The tool stopped being a novelty and became an ecosystem. The experiments became products. The products became entire businesses, and the volume became something human creators could not ignore or keep up with. I do not regret being curious at the beginning, and I do not think curiosity is the problem.
But I do not want curiosity to become an excuse for never questioning the effect a tool is having once those effects are visible. I can acknowledge that AI helps me run my business and still be angry about AI-generated imagery flooding creative markets. And I can believe a solo creator deserves understanding for using a quick promotional graphic and still expect a large company to [00:26:00] pay human creatives when it has the resources to do so.
And I can use terminology in my art process and still keep examining whether I am giving too much of the creative decision-making away. And I can support disclosure without joining in when somebody is attacked before anyone has even asked what their process was. That is where I am at the moment. Not perfectly comfortable, not completely decided, but more intentional than I was
I would genuinely like to know where you are with it too. Not which team you are on, but what has changed for you over the years of AI. Were you excited at first? Are you more comfortable with it now or less?
Is there a use that feels completely reasonable to you and another that crosses a line? Or are you completely anti-AI about it from the beginning? Or have you warmed to it over the years? You can come and share your thoughts with us, but please do it with the same kindness you would want somebody to show you while you are [00:27:00] working through a difficult and fast-changing subject.
If you have not heard the previous co-hosted episode, go back and listen to that one as well. Delores and I talk more broadly about AI labeling and what is changing across the creative industry, and why ordinary edited work can be misunderstood and the growing value of visually human-made art
If this episode made you think, share it with another artist, maker, or creative business owner who is trying to work out where their own boundaries sit. You can also follow the Creative Juggle Joy podcast so you do not miss the conversations we have coming next. Until next time, keep creating, keep juggling, and keep finding joy in the process.
