Not sure I feel about this, the jury is out. I’ve been of the opinion that AI has its place as a helper, rather than taking over and doing it for me. I’ve written pieces of text and asked AI to refine it, used Photoshop to widen the angle and extend outside the frame. I think those are fairly reasonable requests.
However, just getting AI to take over and create something from scratch, just leaves me feeling like a bit of a fraud. In my next post I will lay this out more clearly from a commission I recently completed. In this scenario I think the best approach is to be completely open about the source of creativity, which I think is one of the tenets of responsible use of AI.
I made this illustration back in 2022 and I possibly need to create some more in the series. I really liked the cartoon style and have recently used this in a series of illustrations of shops and businesses in my home town of Pocklington (maybe a later post in the offing). I wondered what AI would make of this illustration if I asked it to make this into a real building.
It’s quite impressive and it’s easy to get carried away and throw all my other illustrations at it to make a new series. But it just leaves me with a sense of dishonesty. It’s not something I created, but at least it’s based on something I created, right? There is some sense of creativity behind it, but it’s not something I hand crafted. There is some sense of value in that, but not enough to develop it into something more.
Here’s another illustration I made last year in 2025. I love these “Unlikely Weapons”. The idea that they are weapons that would never exist in real life. But what would it look like in real life?
Deary me. Even the skull pendant is quite an amazing detail. Also the attention to detail on all the scuffs and scratches on the hardware!
I seriously don’t know where to take this. Maybe I’ll find some sort of use case for AI to enhance my illustrations, I guess I just need to keep experimenting rather than being the Luddite. Does AI have a place in art or even the creative process even when it’s based on something that you have done?
Answers on a postcard…