K.T. Carlisle@KT_Carlisle
TLDR: My husband’s completely original artwork that I watched him slave over for the past year was flagged as gen-AI…because he used background remover on his own image to create promos for his Kickstarter.
Lord, give me the strength to get through this post without going full Jersey on the internet. Fair warning: I’m LIVID right now. This could get ugly.
Usually around this time of day is when I enjoy my coffee, take a picture of Blue or Yoda, and post something encouraging for the writing community. Unfortunately, I’m just not feeling it today for reasons that will become apparent by the end of this post.
Two nights ago, my husband launched his latest Kickstarter for Issue 4 of his supernatural superhero culty comedy comic, DEATHLESS. He was nervous about its success since the last one didn’t go as well as he’d hoped it would, but he worked tremendously hard on it to make it as appealing and exciting as possible. For weeks, he’s painstakingly put together each tier level, pulled images from his comic book to showcase what readers can expect, and even created a fun video to accompany the campaign.
But beyond the promos he’s poured himself into over the past few weeks, I’ve watched him and Stephen breathe life into each page for over a year. These men aren’t just creators; they’re artists. Anthony writes the story and gives creative direction on what needs to appear on each page and in what order. Stephen hand-draws each character, every minute detail that appears in each panel, then passes it back to Anthony for coloring, shading, and lettering. It’s a highly detailed, incredibly labor-intensive process that takes an insane amount of time, passion, and dedication, and to watch them do it is deeply inspiring.
So, imagine my extreme surprise, shock, and disgust when Anthony goes to post his promo comprised of his completely original artwork to try and garner interest for his Kickstarter, only to have it flagged by X with a label that says, “Made with Gen-AI.” His crime? Using the background remover tool on Canva.
What’s worse: When he posted about this, complaining about the inaccuracy of the claim, someone actually commented seemingly agreeing with the label, claiming that the background remover tool is “technically AI.”
Okay, let’s stop right there because this is what infuriates me about the AI discussion and all the AI witch hunters out there hell-bent on destroying people’s livelihoods. There seems to be either a complete lack of understanding or a blatant refusal to acknowledge the difference between what is GENERATIVE AI and what are AI-POWERED TOOLS. So, allow me to scream this loud enough for everyone to hear:
AI-POWERED TOOLS ≠ GENERATIVE AI
If you’re really going to sit there and tell me that the use of an AI-powered tool like Canva’s background remover justifies a label of “Made with Gen-AI,” then by that logic, anyone who’s ever used the Magic Wand Tool on Photoshop also deserves the label on their images—including my father, who was an award-winning graphic artist who taught me everything I know about digital design and who died in 2019. Anyone who’s ever used the Search & Replace feature on Word while editing their novels also needs to have a gen-AI label on their books. Anyone who’s used spellcheck or Grammarly or a Google search for research? All chronic gen-AI users.
I mean, seriously? You’re all kidding, right? Please tell me how the REMOVAL of a background (especially one that you created yourself) is at all GENERATIVE. You are quite literally DELETING imagery, not inserting a prompt to have it replaced with some machine-created bullshit. Such tools have been around long before the release of what is actually considered GENERATIVE AI, and anyone who truly believes it’s fair to tag someone’s promo with a “Made with Gen-AI” label and throttle their posts as a result of using those tools is either deliberately ignorant or just plain fucking stupid.
And to all of you wannabe authors and artists out there who use gen-AI and will see this post as some sort of justification for your prompt-and-play bullshit, spare me. Don’t you dare hijack this Tweet and use it as vindication. It’s precisely because of hacks like you who have no actual skill or desire to suffer through the process of creation that genuine artists are now being attacked and punished and forced to defend themselves. Thanks to you flooding the internet with your garbage, we now live in an age of endless witch hunts, destroyed reputations, and tanked careers based on nothing more than suspicion or (god forbid) the use of an AI-powered tool that’s been in existence for decades. So, and I mean this sincerely from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself.
Y’all, I am so tired of the constant policing. I am so tired of AI being used to detect AI, and people using that as sufficient evidence to ruin someone’s livelihood. I am so tired of the purists who are constantly shifting the goalposts and changing the meaning of creation to satisfy their ever-changing definition of what constitutes AI generation. Because the truth is this: Unless you are inserting a prompt into a program to create something that you do not have the skills to produce yourself, then it is not considered generative AI. And if you can’t understand the difference or the nuance in that, if you seriously don’t get why using a background remover tool is not generative in any way, if you believe that spellcheck and Grammarly and Google search and autocorrect and the Magic Wand tool and any number of AI-powered tools that have been in existence for literal decades are so problematic that their use deserves a label and to destroy someone’s reputation over, then you’re just as much a part of the problem as anyone who plays around with ChatGPT or Grok or Claude or Dali and calls themselves an artist.
This shit is exhausting. It is ruining people’s will to create. And it needs to fucking stop. Now.
