A Note from the Author*
I have spent the better part of my life making art, and after decades of trying—including getting an art degree—I still can’t get what I see in my head onto the page.
AI changed that for me.
My art was never going to train these models. It just wasn’t good enough. But to the artists who feel ripped off because their work was used without their permission, I would ask you to try to imagine what your work is enabling me to do.
I can stand on your shoulders like a child in Dad’s shoes and make something halfway presentable for the first time in nearly fifty years.
I know that doesn’t resolve the question of whether your work should have been used. You deserved a voice in that.
I can only tell you what it has meant on this side of the equation. There have been people and places and images in my head for most of my life that I could see but couldn’t show anyone else. Now, somehow, I can.
So please have a little mercy on an aging failed artist.
And I hope you can find some joy in finally getting to see what was going on in my head all this time.