Culture on My Mind
Generative AI
September 30, 2026
I won’t bury the lede: Generative AI has no place in anything I publish.
No publication I write, no podcast I produce, no audio or video I record will knowingly include generative AI in its final form.
Admittedly, there’s a lot to unpack on this topic and a lot of gray space in that statement. As I recently wandered through my photos on Facebook, I noticed a brief flirtation with those “artistic” filter apps of the 2010s, like Hipstamatic, Snapseed, Pixlr, and Camera360. Many of were inspired by the early days of Instagram, and (in retrospect) were some of the seeds for what we see today as generative AI. I was taken aback by the similarities in those decade-old images.
What they tell me is that people can use AI without knowing because those engines are being woven into everyday life by the tech companies dominating our lives. Apple has Siri and Apple Intelligence, Google has Gemini, Microsoft has Copilot, Meta keeps trying to make Muse happen, and various other engines like ChatGPT keep vying for relevance. Artificial intelligence is also built into services like Adobe, Amazon, and even your local hospital and medical networks. It’s everywhere and not likely to disappear any time soon. Despite the environmental concerns involved with the technology, every industry is exploring AI and how it can streamline operations. To stay ahead of the curve, I dabble with those engines to understand how they work and how they fail.
I met a couple at a small party recently who work in technology and evaluate AI engines. They reminded me that the responsible use case for the technology was as a tool, not as the end result. Humans must remain part of the equation. Look no further than the US military almost taking us to war with China because a human didn’t properly review an intelligence report about a cargo ship. A Special Operations Command analyst asked an AI chatbot to review cargo data for a ship, and that chatbot mixed public data with classified info to conclude a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons technology. Maybe there is credence to the claims that AI could kill all humans in the next decade. All we need to is let laziness and ignorance take the helm.
That ignorance is on full display on social media. Facebook and Twitter/X are full of false posts and images that bend the truth or outright lie. Our politics are driven by these “alternative facts” from the Oval Office all the way down. Users believe the lies because fact-checking has been deliberately disabled by the technocrats in charge. Orwell’s 1984 is in full effect—”The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Coincidentally, my social feeds have been filled recently with posts from aspiring self-published writers who craft stories by feeding prompts to AI engines. Those who possess even the slightest bit of self-awareness have asked why creatives are angry with them, and the answer is clear: The “art” didn’t spring from the person taking credit. All they did was write a prompt and format the results for publication. The engine did the actual labor of crafting the universe and generating the story. But books don’t sell if the byline says ChatGPT. I certainly won’t consider one that has an obvious AI-generated cover; the cover is the advertisement on the shelf and a generative AI cover makes me question if the contents are authentically human.
Are there exceptions? To a degree. I know a filmmaker who uses AI to generate the actual video. My question is who writes the scripts, voices the characters, and generates the animation models? How involved are humans in the process? Is the engine a tool or a stand-in artist? Are actors or celebrities, living or dead, being portrayed without permission (which I find morally repugnant, and seems to be the new in-thing for Doctor Who and Star Wars fan productions)?
Humans must remain integral to the art. Ethics must remain integral to the art.
And sometimes humans make mistakes, which brings me back to the top. If I’m working on a project and discover that generative AI has somehow leaked into the final product, that project will get reworked or scrapped if it’s beyond recovery. If it’s discovered later after publication, that’s a learning moment. I will own that mistake. But I won’t take the easy way out, even if means I don’t publish as much as others. I value my authenticity and integrity more than views and revenue.
Because my work is human work, not machine work. It always will be.
Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.
For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.
