Creative Pirates — The “Manufactured” Outrage Against AI Art

Marissa Loewen
3 min readDec 5, 2022
My own output from the Lensa AI viral trend sweeping the FB newsfeed right now. You pay for so many images you generate. Me with a head-hand addition or creepy doll look might not make it to a gallery near you anytime soon.

If you find yourself suddenly shocked or outraged about the robots stealing art so people can make brightly coloured selfies that have body parts growing out of their head — I should tell you about cultural appropriation, genocide, PETA lobbying Etsy to throttle Indigenous economies using seal fur, and then we can head into your favourite •any home decor and clothing store• and talk about how all of those designs are skimmed from artists and creatives to create fast fashion and throwaway decorations.

As an artist and event planner who plans pop ups focused on furthering the art economy and creating a solid economic foundation for artists and makers — this isn’t new.

Etsy Forums used to be an amazing way to rally thousands of artists together to rail against the corporations who literally copied artist work and sold it on the cheap. But even then we talked about how no ideas were new and we just all made variations and played with concepts we see elsewhere.

AI didn’t start the fire. It’s been always burning since colonialism, why te supremacy and yes your beloved capitalism has been churning. (Thanks Billy Joel for writing most of this)

But I am glad we are talking about it. I have a complicated relationship with AI, especially as someone with disabilities and I use

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Marissa Loewen

Business Strategist, Community Enthusiast, Idea Catalyst & lover of BIG bold questions, the answers & the spaces in between. www.createtherules.com