"I Would Never Use AI": A Few Questions Worth Asking

I hear this statement often lately: “I would never use AI.”

It’s usually said with conviction. Sometimes with moral clarity. Occasionally with an implied distinction between the person saying it and those who’ve made different choices.

I don’t fault anyone for that conviction. But I do think the statement deserves a closer look—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s incomplete.

AI Isn't New

Artificial intelligence as a field has existed for roughly 70 years. Long before generative tools entered public consciousness, AI systems were already embedded in infrastructure most of us rely on daily.

If you’ve bought an airline ticket, used GPS navigation, had a credit card transaction approved, received a weather forecast, or had a medical insurance claim processed—AI was involved.

Not generative AI. Not image models or chatbots. But algorithmic decision-making, pattern recognition, optimization systems—the kinds of AI that have been running quietly in the background for decades.

Most people don’t think of these systems as “AI” because they’ve become invisible. They feel like infrastructure. Like how things just work.

But they are AI systems. And most of us use them every day without thinking about it.

"But I mean Generative AI"

Fair enough. The current conversation is largely about generative tools—image models, large language models, automated text and image creation.

If the objection is specifically about generative AI, then these questions become important:

Which generative AI tools are unacceptable? Which ones are allowed? Who decides? Based on what criteria?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the foundation of any coherent position.

Because generative AI already shows up in tools people use and value: automated captioning for accessibility, real-time translation, text-to-speech for people with visual impairments, transcription services, search refinement, recommendation systems that help surface information…I could go on.

If someone says they want nothing to do with generative AI, I respect that. But I also want to know where the boundary is—and how it accounts for these use cases, who gets to draw the boundary, and why.

Read: The Conscious Creative's Guide

The landscape of AI tools is rapidly evolving. Learn what options are available if you're interested in AI, but afraid of losing your soul, or if you're an artist wanting to opt out.

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The Cost of Removal

If we decide certain tools must not use AI, we need to be willing to accept what that means:

Potentially higher costs
Slower services
Less accessibility support
More manual labor
Reduced information equity

Many of the outcomes people say they care about—accessibility, affordability, inclusion—are currently supported in part by AI systems.

Removing those systems wholesale has consequences. And those consequences won’t be distributed evenly.

Who absorbs the cost? Who gets priced out?

These are practical questions, not hypothetical ones.

AI Is Not One Thing

This is where clarity matters most.

AI is not synonymous with:

Corporate exploitation
Environmental harm
Generative image tools trained on scraped data
Content mills
Surveillance capitalism

AI also includes:

Accessibility tools
Medical diagnostics
Fraud detection
Assistive communication
Pattern recognition that helps organize information
Optimization systems that reduce waste

Treating all of these as morally equivalent doesn’t lead to better decisions. It just makes the conversation harder to have.

The Ethical AI Vetting Checklist

If you want to ensure your AI tools are ethical, here is my checklist that provides:

5 specific things to look for
The companies that do NOT use licensed data
An email template to opt your art out of a company’s data set

Curiosity Isn't Complicity

I don’t believe that asking questions makes someone unethical.

I don’t believe that experimentation equals harm.

I don’t believe that rejecting all new tools protects creative integrity.

And I especially don’t believe that people who quietly rely on AI-powered systems every day earn moral authority by refusing to acknowledge it.

We don’t become more ethical by pretending we’re untouched by the systems we benefit from.

We become more ethical by understanding them—and making intentional choices within them.

The Conversation I Want to Have

I’m not trying to convince anyone to use tools they find objectionable.

I’m not interested in defending AI as inherently good or necessary.

What I am interested in is honesty. Rigor. Accountability that applies to all of us, not just the people willing to name what they’re doing.

If someone says, “I’ve thought through the tradeoffs, I understand where AI shows up in my life, and I’ve decided to avoid these specific generative tools because they don’t align with how I want to work”—that’s a coherent position. I respect it.

If someone says, “I don’t want to use tools whose training data provenance I can’t verify, so I’m sticking with licensed or subscription-based platforms where consent is clearer”—that’s a reasoned choice.

If someone says, “I’ve evaluated the environmental cost of different tools relative to their alternatives, and I’ve decided this particular workflow isn’t worth it for my practice”—that’s informed decision-making.

But “I would never use AI” as a blanket moral statement, without clarification, without acknowledging what’s already embedded in daily infrastructure, without distinguishing between different tools and use cases?

That’s not a principle. It’s a declaration that skips over the actual work of discernment.

And that work matters.

That’s the conversation worth having.

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