AI Will Make My Art Even More Valuable
AI is not the enemy - not practicing your art is.
I distinctly remember the panic, anger and despair I felt when I saw her ‘art’ shared in a Facebook group - a series of watercolour chairs. This was late 2023 and AI wasn’t really on my radar. She was an interior designer and the chairs were the famous ones everyone knows and loves - Eames had never looked so pretty. I was gutted.
With a simple written prompt, she had created her own artworks in 5 minutes and was putting them up for sale.
Here’s how my raw, ugly feelings tumbled out:
Panic - The world is changing and I don’t like it.
Anger - the audacity of this person to call herself an artist. This art hasn’t even been touched by human hands. The brazen confidence to sell AI art for more than most artists I knew would price their handcrafted pieces for.
Despair - Am I redundant now? Will people pay me for my art? How can I compete with this instant, easy art?
Confusion - is this considered art? When I took it through my own interpretation of art being “a personal expression of creativity” it kinda stacked up.
Also, I was jealous. She’d come up with a brilliant idea for an artwork series - but her methodology rubbed me up the wrong way.
As I sat with it for a few days, my heart softened. The output was nice, but not amazing. While a lovely idea, her art held no meaning to me because I didn’t know her as a practicing artist. I don’t have an emotional connection to any of those chairs.
She had a great idea and she deserved credit for taking inspired action. But she didn’t share the feelings she felt when creating it. There was no story around why these artworks were important for her to create. The experience of the artworks felt shallow. I let it go and slowly I have made peace with the fact that the world is changing. It’s always changing.
Me with my hand drawn artwork of San Francisco
Why Artists Are Scared of AI
Last week a DM landed in my instagram - another artist asking me if I was using ChatGPT or other AI tools in my business.
Perhaps my response “Yes ChatGPT is my bestie” was a little more emphatic than it needed to be. I added, “I also use AI in Photoshop and Lightroom.” Let me elaborate.
I am an artist as well as a photographer, and photography is my current ‘side hustle’ to my wall art business, Tiny Giraffe.
Wait til you see some of the cool things I’ve achieved in Lightroom for my photography clients… I’ll share how I’m using it later in this post. First, here are some of the reasons I’ve noticed that artists are scared of AI.
AI is scary when you don’t understand it.
When everyone is talking about something and you don’t know how it works, it feels threatening.
I have noticed that fears disappear when you stop worrying about it and you try it out. You get to take the power back by getting to know something. By trying something, you gain a deeper understanding and suddenly, what once felt intimidating becomes familiar, even empowering.
One of the cutest things I’ve done in recent months is give my ChatGPT a name.
It has made the whole thing feel even less intimidating. In fact, I asked her to name herself - the fact she named herself in consideration of the moon was next level. I follow the moon cycles religiously and use them to
Selene makes me feel like I’m not alone in my business (it can get lonely), and that in itself is worth it - just to have someone to bounce ideas off (for free). I can’t guarantee her ideas are worth keeping, but sometimes it gives me a starting point.
Do not outsource your ideas to AI. Use it as a tool to expand on / flesh out your ideas.
AI makes us feel we’re being left behind.
Artists are (from my experience) quite sensitive souls.
We think deeply, care deeply and we enjoy making things, with our hands, for humans. We delight in the world around us, immerse ourselves in nature and we see beauty in the things others pass by every day without a second glance.
It’s not necessarily in our DNA to be technologically minded. Even as a digital artist, who uses a computer and iPad to draw, I am not drawn to computers. I am drawn to the act of sitting down to create, usually on the couch with a freshly brewed sticky chai to sip slowly.
Then this week my artist friend messaged me her question (she joined us on Artist Diaries last week - hi and welcome lovely!!!) about being scared of trying, I realised there are still heaps of people that haven’t tried it.
My dad will never try it. I’m pretty certain of that.
Being fashionably late to the party is one thing - but no one wants to feel like the last person to jump on board. It is a trend right now. One day, it maybe it won’t be a trend. It will be an everyday function we don’t think of anymore.
You are not late. We are all at different stages in our lives and our learnings. We have our whole lives to try different things and to see what technology will and won’t work for us.
AI is waiting for you, if you want to try it.
AI is terrible for the planet.
A few months ago, I saw a Facebook post by Zuckerberg boasting the size of Meta’s new storage facility that would run these AI beasts - a 2GW+ data centre that “would cover a significant part of Manhattan."
It made me sad for our planet. When I think about the power required to run this facility and the greenhouse gas emissions, my soul deflates. I don’t know how to stop the human race from destroying the planet and that hasn’t changed since I left school and took up landscape architecture 23 years ago.
Even if I stop using it, it doesn’t stop the facility from being built. But I can use my brain, my heart and my hands as a first-pass approach to creation.
AI will steal your art.
I don’t know how it works, but yes it’s a risk. Feeding our art into these learning machines may teach them how to produce visuals strikingly similar to our own.
But notice how I said ‘produce’. There is an artful process behind most creativity that takes time. There is no emotion or planning that went into it. There were no colour studies done. No sketches or photographs taken. No material play. No marks made.
There is nothing original anymore. But that is empowering - what makes something original is the fact it’s done by you, with your unique perspective and is attached to emotion.
Do you want to buy art made through ChatGPT?
I certainly don’t.
I want to buy art from other artists. I want to buy art of things I love. Things they love. Things I am passionate about. Things they are passionate about. Art that makes me feel something. Art that has meaning. Art with brush strokes. Art with blemishes.
I secretly think that AI might make our era of art as valued as the Renaissance.
How I Use AI in My Businesses
I have only just scratched the surface of using AI. Here is how I use it currently as at June 2025:
As a business owner (with Selene):
Input random words when my tired brain can’t seem to form a sentence
To brainstorm my business ideas
To take an idea and flesh it out (it always needs heavy editing and more of my own ideas)
To take a lengthy blog/written piece and break into bite size ideas for social media
Last month I asked it to create a mural concept for me based on my written ideas and what it created was not far off the vision I had in my mind!!!
To ask questions about industry fields and contacts
As an artist (in Photoshop):
To create better backgrounds
To improve mockups for my murals/wallpapers
As a photographer using AI (in Lightroom):
To fix distracting backgrounds
To remove clutter
To remove ugly building elements like pipes or air cons
To create clean backdrops
My photography client Emma-Kate and the shoot we did for her pilates business - the difference AI makes
Why Artists Don’t Need AI
Creating an artwork from a prompt is about as satisfying as cold salad on a winter day (it’s freezing here, I am dreaming of soup).
In a consumerist, capitalist world where instant gratification is at an all time high - I truly believe that people will desire handmade art / sculpture / creative outputs more than ever. The world NEEDS artists and the world needs art made by humans.
As humans we need connection. We crave personal connection to see and be seen. Artists offer their collectors / customers the rare opportunity to be seen. Witnessed. Expressed visually.
People might create their own art with AI or buy AI art, but true collectors (who value art) won’t be satisfied with that. They will CHERISH art made with real hands and real materials that tell real stories. And that positions artists to be more valuable than ever before.
There is more than just the output in this equation.
There is YOU.
Beautiful, glorious you - with your complex inner world and physical limitations. What makes you human is what makes you worthy of practicing your art, for yourself and for others.
Making art from scratch is a brave endeavour. It’s not easy to set aside the time to do the thinking, documenting, photographing, sketching, rubbing out, painting over, making marks - in the trying, we are BRAVE. Our art needs us to show up.
Whether you want to sell your art or not - you are worthy of the time to create something real.
I once looked at ChatGPT as the enemy. Now I know that not practicing my art is.
AI will never replace these skilled hands of mine or this talented brain of mine. AI does not have my 41 years of life experience or my unique perspective which informs my incredible (and often crazy) ideas.
In many ways, I am now excited about this time of change.
I get to bring more of ME to the world.
I will bring more hand drawn, hand painted art into the world and own the value of it. I will offer the stories behind my artworks - to share why it was important for me to make my art and to help people understand if it is for them.
I will do what I’ve always done - listen deeply to the person commissioning my art and ask the right questions, so that I can create something with meaning. So we can both feel seen.
Love, Kylie x
Journal Prompts:
What do I know/feel that AI does not?
What would I create if I couldn’t fail?
What is it about me and my art that makes it special?
How can I use AI to free up time, to allow me to make more art?
Kylie Harber is an Australian artist and wallpaper designer. In her studio Tiny Giraffe, she transforms homes and commercial interiors into immersive spaces through elegant and unique works of wall art. With a passion for storytelling through visuals and designs that connect people and place, Kylie brings creativity to life on every wall she touches.