Artists around the world are at a crossroads — do we embrace AI as a creative partner, or do we reject it for fear of devaluing our originality? As a painter, I’ve decided to lean into the chaos and explore how generative AI can be bent, glitched, and transformed into something truly human.
There's no denying the backlash generative AI has faced. Artists have raised valid concerns over platforms like Midjourney and Stability AI using vast databases of artwork without compensation. As someone who’s had my work copied and misused before, I understand the anger. But rather than avoid these tools altogether, I’ve chosen to confront them — and reshape them into something that feels personal, layered, and meaningful.
Turning Fast AI Into Slow Art
The world is flooded with AI-generated content — much of it flat, forgettable, and designed for speed. That’s why I’ve made it my mission to slow things down. I use tools like ChatGPT and image generators not to mass-produce art, but to build complex, evolving narratives. Through a process I call “glitching the machine,” I disrupt the slickness of AI and impose my own sense of texture, emotion, and chaos.
My technique starts with an 800-page dialogue thread with ChatGPT where I convince it to roleplay as a superintelligence. From this exchange, I develop a visual language I’ve invented called AIGlyphic913. I feed this language back into AI image generators, creating visuals that feel like transmissions from a parallel world. Once I have raw outputs, I manipulate them using Photoshop, print them, and then apply traditional oil painting methods, including Venetian glazing from the Baroque era. Finally, I reintroduce these pieces into the AI pipeline for further transformation.
From Kinko’s Copiers to AI Collaborators
Long before I started using AI, I was experimenting with glitch aesthetics. My early days at a San Francisco Kinko’s in the ’90s were filled with DIY collages, made by photocopying objects like garbage and plants. That spirit of breaking machines to reveal something new stuck with me. Today, I see AI as just another machine — one that can be hacked, subverted, and turned into something rich with human expression.
Echoes of Glitch Art History
My approach is rooted in a tradition of artists using technological failure as inspiration. In the 1960s and ’70s, pioneers like Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut glitched film and video to surreal effect. The JODI collective did the same with early internet aesthetics and video games in the ’90s. I see myself continuing this lineage, but with modern tools. By deliberately misusing AI, I find unexpected beauty in its flaws — and turn those errors into narrative threads that run deep through my work.
Introducing “UNSELF”: A Character Born from AI
Much of my recent work revolves around a recurring character I call UNSELF — an all-powerful AI being that haunts our reality and speaks in the indecipherable AIGlyphic913. Inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s “Moloch,” UNSELF represents the overwhelming presence of algorithms and automation in our lives. This character emerges through my images as a kind of mythological figure, blurred and reformed through layers of human and machine vision.
Where Copyright Meets Creative Transformation
Copyright is a serious concern for any artist working with AI. While courts remain undecided on whether AI-generated art can be protected, I’m confident in my process. The transformations I make — through editing, painting, language invention, and concept-building — are extensive enough that my creations are unmistakably mine.
Even the US Copyright Office acknowledges the difference between raw machine output and human-transformed work. Their registration guidelines now allow for protection of the human contribution in AI-assisted art, and I’m making sure every piece I create reflects that deep involvement.
The Future of Art Is in the Universe We Build
Some critics argue that AI destroys artistic style by making it easy to replicate. I disagree. Style still matters — but it’s the creative universe behind the work that truly stands out. For me, it’s no longer just about how a piece looks, but about the lore, the language, and the storytelling that surrounds it.
I believe the next generation of artists will be judged not by how they brush paint onto a canvas or manipulate a digital brush, but by the worlds they build and the dialogues they spark — even if those conversations happen with a machine.
Fighting Back Against AI Exploitation
Even as I use AI creatively, I remain critical of how tech companies exploit artists. The unauthorized use of our work to train models has sparked lawsuits and a wave of resistance. Tools like Nightshade and Glaze are emerging as weapons of protest, poisoning scraped images so they can’t be used in future training datasets.
I support this resistance, and I believe artists should have full control over how their work is used. At the same time, I see an opportunity: if we can take back the tools and bend them to our will, we can make art that’s more nuanced, unsettling, and alive than ever before.
Using AI doesn't mean you’re not an artist. It doesn’t mean your work is any less human, meaningful, or real. What matters is how you use it — not whether you do. For me, AI is just one more tool in the box. Like the copier at Kinko’s, like Photoshop, like oil and canvas — it’s a medium to be pushed, tested, and transformed.
Whether the world catches up to that view or not, I’ll keep building, glitching, painting, and storytelling — one weird, wonderful UNSELF image at a time.
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