Blog / 2026 / Remaining Unflappable in the Face of AI

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This is the making of a painting of a woman named Janet. This artwork shares two vital elements with all the portraits I’ve ever made:

1. It’s 100% human-made. Obviously.
2. In order to paint Janet, first, I photographed her, while also trying to get a feel for how she sees herself by asking questions like: “how would the people who know you best describe you?”

“Unflappable” is how Janet replied.

She said lots of other interesting things too, but that one word stuck with me, because in my twenty-plus years of asking that question, no one has ever described themself that way. And until I heard Janet say it, I had no idea how much I would love to be unflappable.

Especially right now.

Because: everything. But also, because: AI.

Last year, I posted the following text in the footer of every page of my site:

Gwenn Seemel believes in a world where artists are fairly compensated for their work and protected against technologies that circumvent the ethical and equitable treatment of creative people. For this reason, Gwenn does not use generative AI when making art, videos, or writing.

And I stand by that statement, but after watching a video by the astrophysicist and science education expert Dr. Fatima, I’ve changed my footer text to the following:

This art is 100% human-made.

And then, below, the question:

Why no AI?

And the question is a link.

I wanted to say more about my choice to avoid AI, so I needed to link out to a longer explanation page.

I’ve no doubt that my explanation will evolve, but it feels good to have laid out my thoughts, because, although Dr. Fatima’s video was fascinating on many levels, watching it was like painting Janet in that I got caught up on one thing in particular.

Around minute 53 of the video, Dr. Fatima refers to alarming research indicating that not really understanding AI makes a person more likely to enjoy the technology.

That’s bad enough, but then Dr. Fatima reveals that the studies she cited were done for market research. In other words, the AI companies know that keeping us from understanding AI makes us more likely to use it. Or, to put it simply: the AI industry loves the poorly educated.

So I’m trying to be like Janet—I’m trying not to flap too much about all this—but I’m asking you to please learn more about AI.