(This is the eighth in a series on generative AI content.)
There’s a hard truth at the center of the generative AI boom that rarely gets the attention it deserves: human artists can exist without AI, but AI cannot exist without human artists. No matter how advanced the technology becomes—no matter how quickly it generates images, writes poems, or composes melodies—it is, at its core, entirely dependent on the creative work of real people.
And yet, we are witnessing an industry emerge that feeds off artists while devaluing them in the same breath. Creators are being told to “adapt or die” by the same systems that depend on their work to function. This isn’t progress. It’s not innovation. It’s parasitism.
The Myth of Machine Creativity
Generative AI is often described with glowing terms like “creative,” “imaginative,” or even “artistic.” But these labels are misleading. AI does not create—it predicts. It doesn’t invent new ideas from lived experience or wrestle with meaning. It doesn’t make mistakes that become breakthroughs or feel the emotional weight behind a phrase, a brushstroke, or a melody. It has no intuition. It simply reconstructs fragments of what it’s seen before—fragments created by people.
The datasets that feed AI models are built on vast swaths of human expression. Artists, writers, photographers, musicians, and designers—people who labored over their work, who poured themselves into their craft—are the real architects of what AI can generate. Their work is scraped from the internet, from archives, from communities, often without their knowledge or consent, let alone compensation.
That’s not collaboration. That’s exploitation. It’s not a new form of creation. It’s mimicry with a prettier interface.
And if you were to strip away every image, article, book, song, or video made by real people, generative AI would be left with nothing. No data. No style. No substance. The machine can’t function without the culture it cannibalizes.
The One-Way Dependency
Human creativity has never required AI. Artists have expressed themselves with the most basic tools—charcoal on stone, ink on parchment, strings on wood, voice in silence. What we now call “traditional” art forms existed long before digital anything. Creative culture evolves naturally through curiosity, collaboration, and lived experience.
AI, however, has no such lineage. It is not an independent originator. It exists only because it was trained on human output—trained to recognize patterns that were painstakingly shaped by living creators over centuries. And yet, many of these creators are now being told their labor no longer matters. They’re told that their professions are obsolete. That the future belongs to those who prompt machines, not those who practice craft.
The hypocrisy is staggering. We’re watching people be pushed aside by a system that depends entirely on their work—often without credit or consent. Artists are expected to adapt to the very thing that has stolen their voices.
This isn’t a mutual relationship. It’s a one-way dependency that masquerades as technological progress.
Parasites with Branding
When something feeds on another’s labor and offers nothing back, we call it parasitic. That’s exactly what generative AI is right now: a parasitic technology branded as “efficiency,” “empowerment,” and “democratization.” But its impact tells a different story.
Artists are losing commissions to AI-generated imitations. Writers are watching AI systems crank out articles, stories, and scripts based on language models trained on books and blogs they never licensed. Musicians are hearing their voices mimicked by software trained on decades of recorded music. The result is not a celebration of creativity—it’s a slow erasure of the creators.
And when these harms are pointed out, the response is too often dismissal. Critics are called Luddites, accused of being anti-technology, jealous, or gate-keepers. But this isn’t about rejecting new tools—it’s about demanding basic respect for the people who made those tools possible.
Extraction Is Not Innovation
There’s a critical difference between invention and extraction. AI doesn’t replace creativity—it extracts from it. Just like strip mining guts the earth for short-term gain, generative AI digs through human culture, scoops up what it finds useful, and repackages it. And like environmental destruction, the long-term consequences are ignored in favor of short-term convenience and profit.
We’re watching centuries of art, language, and music be treated as raw material for machines—stripped of context, emotion, and meaning. The people who created it are being left behind or asked to compete with watered-down versions of themselves.
And yet, this process is marketed as “democratizing” creativity—allowing “everyone” to make art. But art was already democratic. A pencil and paper cost less than an AI subscription. The myth that AI “levels the playing field” ignores the fact that it’s built on uncredited, unpaid labor. This isn’t empowerment. It’s appropriation with better PR.
A Call for Recognition and Respect
If AI is going to exist in creative spaces at all, it must begin with ethical grounding. That means (and AI uses bullet points because of people, not the other way around):
• Full transparency about what data was used, and from whom.
• Clear consent from creators whose work powers these systems.
• Fair compensation for the artists, writers, and musicians who helped build the foundation.
• Strong boundaries about where and how generative AI can be used—and where it can’t.
Because if this technology truly has a place in the future of art, then it must respect the people who made that future possible. If we claim to value innovation, we have to start by valuing the innovators. If we care about culture, we have to protect the people who shape it.
AI owes everything to artists. But artists owe nothing to AI. And if we don’t say that loudly—and often—we risk losing the very thing that makes art worth protecting: the human soul behind it.