Can artists find a middle ground between embracing and rejecting artificial intelligence?

Editor’s note: This story is the third edition of Link Rot, a new column from Shanti Escalante-De Mattei that explores the intersection of art, technology and the Internet.

Complaints about the use of generative AI in creative fields are often countered by a “slippery slope” view of history: If new creative tools are always emerging, why should we be so frustrated? this one? AI defenders might argue that similar arguments about ease of use have been used to defend photography and painting. Historical specificity is downplayed and replaced by the notion of technological progress so inevitable that it seems barely worth worrying about.

Late last month, Eline van der Velden, the creator of the AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood, expressed this line of thinking in an Instagram post responding to rumors that Norwood was about to sign with an agency. “I see AI not as a replacement for humans,” der Velden writes, “but rather as a new tool—a new paintbrush. Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI open up new possibilities without compromising live performance, AI offers another way of imagining and constructing stories.”

Let’s get this inaccurate fact out of the way – animation and live-action films emerged more or less simultaneously from the invention of celluloid, and puppetry existed as long as stage performance. What’s more, this logic creates a false equivalence that erases the history of labor-capital relations that, over time, shaped different kinds of artisan communities in places like Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and beyond.

While creatives across the spectrum view generative AI as an ax used by management to eliminate jobs and drive down rates, de Wilden rejects this zero-sum framework. But let’s take her word for it: What does it actually look like for an artist to think of generative AI as just another tool (a “brush”)?

Animators and CGI artists have been using digital tools for decades. Change or “innovation” is not the issue. Generative AI is controversial because customers are already using the technology to pressure employees, and the tools are developed in a highly unethical way. For many animators I’ve interviewed, AI has reshaped their workflow with commercial clients—mostly for the worse, and mostly by cutting into their paychecks.

Some say clients now arrive with AI-generated mood boards and reference images and then ask skilled professionals to imitate their ideas, rather than leveraging their creative expertise. Expectations tend to change quickly once an artist starts working, and clients expect them to keep up, just as easily and quickly as they should with ChatGPT, Sora, or any of the popular apps today. Sometimes clients explicitly ask animators to use AI; other times, their expectations are implicit in the extremely tight deadlines they’re given.

“It feels like the AI ​​is teaching them that these things can be generated very quickly, but they really can’t,” said animator Sam Mason, who has directed animated music videos for the likes of hip-hop artist Mac Miller and worked with major commercial clients. Such as Coca-Cola and Toyota.

“Currently they still can’t get AI to produce the final result. But what it does is devalue the entire process because it creates an expectation that artists can create infinite possibilities in a short period of time,” he explains.

For Saad Mosajee, another animator who has directed animated music videos (Lil Nas (Most image and video generators are trained on billions of images and videos scraped from public websites without permission from the creators.)

“The most ethical and practical solution is to train the model on your own work,” Mosagi told me. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of focus on the responsibility in terms of data sets and training models, but I find that really unfair and a bit oppressive because a lot of people never consented to their work going into these models.”

For Mossage and Mason, the problem is the continued lack of shared moral standards. The way popular tech companies release artificial intelligence through open source channels and constant updates is clearly designed to subvert the kind of friction that can create a consensus about what is appropriate and what is excessive. Despite these updates, gen-AI tools still have a long way to go in being truly designed for artists rather than their bosses.

“For traditional visual artists to use these tools, they need to be explicitly structured to be combined with input from body-based skills like painting, sculpting and acting,” said Isaiah Saxon, co-founder of animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura and who directed the feature film. Tai Chi Legend (2025). However, Saxon hopes these custom tools will be available soon.

So what’s the middle path between Lutheranism and AI evangelism? Ideally, feeding ethical data sets into applications designed by creative communities will allow generative AI to fulfill its potential as a tool rather than a threat to workers. However, that’s not how the industry currently operates. The true middle way is a confusing one.

Animators told me that clients pressure them to incorporate AI into projects because they believe it can make the same work cheaper and faster. But in many cases, this is not the case. In one example – I won’t name names – a client was so eager for an animator to use AI that he “pretended” to do it, doing the job the old-fashioned way and telling the client he had used a generator. While it may seem unwise to let your customers believe that parts of your process can be automated when they can’t, there are times when it’s the “smart” thing to do.

Another animator told me that when a client insisted on using traditional processes, he cut budgets and reallocated funds, even though they were pushing for schedules and aesthetics that only AI could deliver. In other cases, animators manage to convince clients that the technology is not yet capable of delivering the finished product they want. But even having such a conversation can be risky.

Another way artists explore this middle ground is through personal decisions about when to use the technology. For many, AI tools have no place in their passion projects—at least not yet. Why? There are several reasons. First, the technology is not good enough. Another reason is that the constant need to keep up with new tools and updates can be demoralizing and exhausting. But ultimately, for the three animators mentioned above, the reasons were more emotional and instinctive. Like nearly every skilled artist I spoke to on the subject, they described similar uneasy feelings when working with artificial intelligence. Sometimes it is described as haunting, sometimes as empty—a feeling almost always associated with a loss of process.

“For me, the main motivation for adopting any new technology is always to follow my nose for something that looks happy, interesting and fun,” Saxon said. “I’ve enjoyed shooting movies in the mountains with my friends, building giant sets and animatronic puppets, sculpting and painting, learning stop-motion animation, learning 3D animation software, all because these things are a fun adventure. At least for now, using artificial intelligence with the skills I have is not a fun adventure.”