Over the past year, I’ve been playing around with AI image generation tools and, somewhat surprisingly (as someone with luddite tendencies), I love it. Most of my clients are social impact organizations with limited budgets, and finding high-quality imagery is always one of our biggest challenges. Stock photography and stock illustrations often feel cliché at best, cheesy and amateurish at their worst. That’s where this hybrid AI + illustration process really shines. It allows me to create custom, on-brand, totally non-generic artwork that fits the tone of each project without the time and cost of fully custom illustrations from scratch.
To me, this collaboration feels like the best use of AI. I’ve trained AI tools on my own hand-drawn illustrations, and then they’re able to quickly generate concepts. These often need finessing, but since everything lives within my own style, it’s easy for me to do. I’ve always loved drawing and illustration, and now it feels like something I can offer clients at a price they may actually be able to afford. I also really enjoy the creative process—and the speed that AI can bring. I love quick idea generation and the ability to expand out and explore concepts that don’t feel generic or tired.
For example, in the recent Democracy 2076 report I worked on, there were many opportunities to imagine future worlds using tone and image assets that felt emotionally spot-on. (I should say: I still find AI-generated photos to feel kind of weird and icky. I’m not totally sure why I make that distinction, but for now, I do.)
For much of my life, one of the struggles I’ve had as an artist and creator is feeling that my work is not good enough—or that it simply takes too long to make high-quality visuals. Now that AI can quickly help me create creative assets I’m genuinely happy to offer clients and put out into the world, it’s brought up some unexpected questions for me as a creative person. Somewhat surprisingly, it has also freed me up to make art again.
A friend put it perfectly recently when she referenced how the advent of photography expanded the possibilities of traditional art. Once artists no longer needed to chase realism, a new world opened up.
That’s what has emerged for me over the past few months. AI + me can make excellent illustrations with relatively minimal effort (not taking into account the environmental cost, of course). So where does that leave me as an artist? It’s led me to love the process again, and to celebrate imperfection. I’ve heard people talk about writers intentionally leaving in typos or mistakes (removing em dashes!) so their work feels authentic. It sounds silly, but it makes sense to me.
As a creator, this new world frees me up to enjoy the most human parts of the art-making process: seeing the world, feeling a pen in my hand, making subtle decisions about line weight and color. Much of what I make now is just for me—slightly strange and imperfect sketches. But this spills into my professional work as well. Rather than clean, near-perfect graphics, I’m finding myself drawn toward work that feels more edgy and real.
This is an unexpected benefit of AI making everything seemingly so perfect. I think we’re all growing tired of ultra-polished videos, photos, and writing. Maybe not tired exactly—but we gloss over them. Before this massive content-generation moment, we appreciated a highly polished piece. Now it’s a dime a dozen. And so we may be drawn instead to work that is more raw, more meaningful, and more human.
That’s where I am, at least. I wonder where you are. I’m looking forward to my projects this year and figuring out how I can bring myself to the work, and my way of seeing. Also my overachieving AI friend. Together, I think we’re going to make some really outstanding things.