By Andrew Fairclough
True Grit Founder / Creative Director

As generative AI continues to suck the life out of every conversation in the creative industry, we're making the case that artists have reason to be optimistic about the future of human creativity, and we've got the receipts to back it up.

If you’ve been following us for long enough, you know we’re pretty staunchly anti-AI.



So many things about generative AI don’t sit right with us. If mass, automated copyright theft alone doesn't infuriate you as an artist, then the devaluation of creativity, devastating environmental impacts, and systemised transfer of wealth from working artists to a handful of tech billionaires might just be enough to break your spirit.

OpenAI's Sam Altman says it's "over" for AI if he can't steal your work. Images Steve Jennings/Tech Crunch, Yuriy Vertikov/Unsplash

If you're a creative who spends any time online, you probably feel like you're constantly being bombarded with AI industry propaganda. Every day brings a new doomsday warning, and a new "creative" tool explicitly designed to render human artists unnecessary. It feels as if the AI oligarchs have their way, you will eat your slop, and you will love it. 

But a new narrative is taking shape, and as artists, we have good reason for optimism if only we can see past the noise and our own fears.

The bubble

Just like the hype surrounding 3D TVs, NFTs, and the Metaverse that preceded it, AI is a solution in search of a problem, with trillions invested in tech that is yet to turn a profit. Economists are sounding the alarm, with many warning that the tech industry is in an unprecedented investment bubble that will burst sooner rather than later. Even OpenAI and Amazon CEO's, Sam Altman, and Jeff Bezos, have been widely reported as agreeing that the AI bubble will burst, and the implosion will be spectacular.

Despite the risks to the world economy, the idea that investors can't out-hype the economic laws of nature does make for a perverse brand of optimism.

A burst AI "bubble" would likely be good for artists because it would kill the hype machine, leaving behind only genuinely useful AI tools, separating them from the overhyped business models that threaten the creative industries. 

AI is here to stay, but this shift could reduce the flood of cheap, AI-generated content that competes with human artists and help clarify intellectual property issues.

But the bubble alone isn't big AI's only problem. 

The research: human art good, AI slop bad

New research by Columbia Business School has shown that when human-made art is shown next to AI art, people assign a far greater value to the human-made art (by as much as a whopping 163%). This research challenges assumptions about AI art's impact: showing that the presence of AI-generated art can actually enhance the perceived value of human-made work.

"ARTISTS WHO EMPHASIZE THAT THEIR WORK IS HUMAN-MADE, WITH NO AI INVOLVEMENT, COULD ACTUALLY COMMAND HIGHER PRICES"

Carl Horton, lead researcher, Columbia Business School

Whether or not this applies to commercial art forms such as illustration and animation remains to be seen. Nonetheless, multiple studies have produced similar results, finding that people fundamentally value human creativity and believe that AI art requires little effort and, therefore, lacks value.

But we really don't need research to tell us this. People can recognise AI content (for now), and they don’t like it one bit. 

The public backlash

Whether it be a laughably bad ad campaign or a social network nobody wants, almost every public attempt at adopting generative AI shares one thing in common, unrelenting mockery and disdain from the general public. 

The marketing landscape is littered with cautionary tales of brands that have embraced AI "art" and slithered away battered and bruised. You don't have to trawl through Instagram long to find AI-dabbling brands, bands, and publishers getting absolutely destroyed in the comments by a public with short tempers and long memories. 

J Crew x Vans: Rage-bait or creative malpractice?

Interestingly, it seems that whilst brands get targeted, the AI prompters who create the work for them escape relatively unscathed, quietly building a fan base for their "art", sometimes with troll-like swagger. This suggests that people are much more likely to punish the profiteering of a faceless company than a real human just trying to pay their rent. 

Regardless, it's not just online that the public refuses to buy what AI companies are selling. AI startup Friend.ai recently discovered what happens when you run a million-dollar advertising campaign on the NY subway system. The campaign was defaced and dismantled with reckless abandon within hours (which may have even been the point). Whether or not the campaign was a rage-bait PR stunt, the fact that AI companies know the public hates them reveals many AI startups to be exactly the kind of opportunistic grifts that they appear to be. 

As AI evolves, so does the language surrounding it, with "slop" competing for 2025's word of the year as universal shorthand for the unwanted AI-generated content infecting the open internet and social media. Even tech-native Gen-Z are showing resistance, appropriating and popularising the use of "clankers", (originally a Star Wars slur for droids) to dismissively give the middle finger to AI companies and their super-fans online.

With the general public (and vocal creatives) making their distaste for generative AI known, the risk for AI-curious businesses is real. Nothing is more useless to a marketer than content that is perceived as unworthy of its target audience's most valuable asset, their attention.

The business backlash

Despite trillions in investment flowing into AI, there has been little proof that the technology is improving the bottom line for anyone beyond the major players whose valuations have soared based on investment hype. A recent study by MIT found that 95% of companies that tried to integrate AI into their business can't find a way to make money from it. 

Brands and creative studios are beginning to sour on AI, citing reputational risk and a race to blandness. Companies like Swedish fintech giant Klarna, which replaced employees with AI, are quietly hiring them back, and 55% of surveyed businesses in the UK that did the same say they now regret it. 

This inability to find a viable use case for AI is not sustainable and may bode well for workers and artists as reality catches up. 

But if you need any further evidence that generative AI may be all hype and no substance, look no further than the AI giants themselves. In the race to accelerate consumer adoption of Chat GPT, OpenAI recently spent a gazillion dollars on a brand campaign that was (checks notes) shot on 35mm film with a full crew and real human actors.
The chatbot's involvement was limited to admin and compiling shot lists—hardly game-changing stuff. If these so-called titans of industry don’t believe in their own product, why should marketers and brand managers?

The legal challenges

Finally, and probably most delightfully, legal challenges are growing, with the landscape shifting in favour of artists' rights. Court cases are stacking up with plaintiffs ranging from The New York Times to independent artists. 

Courts are taking these issues seriously, allowing them to move through the legal system from initial filings to discovery and beyond. Anthropic was recently forced to agree to a $1.5b settlement with authors over copyright infringement. Other results have been mixed and case-specific, with judges indicating that plaintiffs must be able to show that AI tools cause direct harm to original copyright holders. 

Every new legal challenge brings us closer to a time when AI companies are forced to negotiate licensing frameworks that allow creators to either opt out or be fairly compensated for their contribution to the systems trained on their work.

An AI future is not inevitable

None of this is to say that there aren't valid use cases for AI. I use Claude almost daily to assist with analysing contracts, summarising research, and even debugging code on our website. I try to use AI mindfully as an assistant to streamline admin so I can focus on the truly creative stuff. 

But with so much investment at stake, the AI industry's unrelenting propaganda is designed to wear us down until we accept their dystopian future as inevitable, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. By giving in to their narrative, we give them permission to steal the joy from creativity, whilst we submit to a future we didn't ask for and won't benefit from. 

Call me delusional, but I’m ready to opt out of the doom and gloom and seek a creative future where plagiarism machines are as valueless as the slop they produce, a world where the growing backlash holds and human creativity still has clout. 

I know I'm not alone in feeling this way, and that gives me hope. 

Andrew Fairclough
True Grit Founder / Creative Director

Got a hot take on this? Comment here.

Further Reading

Wired: The AI Backlash Keeps Growing Stronger
Newsweek: The AI Backlash Is Here
Wired: Every AI Lawsuit Visualized
The Drum: Brands Must Resist AI
MarTech: AI fatigue Is Real and it's Costing Brands
Columbia Business School: Why Human-Made Art Matters More in the Age of AI