There is no ethical use of so-called GenAI. It is always extremely disappointing to see it.

A yin-yang symbol

It is difficult to adequately communicate the depth of rage and despair that many, especially people in or recently made redundant from creative industries, feel when we do.

Ethically, it’s hard to say which part is worst: the copyright theft, the environmental damage, the destroyed careers, the deaths from AI-induced psychosis, the financial shenanigans, the obviously immoral military and porn-related uses, or the fact that across the board, whether it’s writing, music, code or art, the output is inevitably on a continuum running from utterly unusable to - at best - a bit shit if you accidentally look at it properly.

Ethical issues aside, another problem with using GenAI images for a blog is that it’s the thin end of the wedge.

At what point do you start using GenAI to write the blog, bearing in mind that newcomers seeing GenAI images will probably assume you already are. At what point do readers stop reading the blog and instead rely on a GenAI-generated summary to get the gist? What, in the end, are any of us doing here, if anyone even is here any more in any meaningful sense?

As someone pointed out the other day, AI may be “here to stay” but so are microplastics: that doesn’t mean I shovel a bowlful down my mouth every morning.

I’m all for technology in general - I have made a career in it - but only when technology improves things. GenAI makes everything worse.

Everyone has to make their own mind up about the ethics of using GenAI, and I doubt I have changed any minds by writing this.

But it’s particularly galling on a Tai Chi blog, where a reader might reasonably expect to get a small dose of positive energy and mindful thoughtfulness, not the concentrated dark essence of utter hatred and contempt for all humanity communicated by AI generated images, regardless of the prompter’s intent.