See, if AI art was just a glorified version of Photoshop—If the prompt “Draw a picture of a horse with Bart Simpson's face” was done by ripping Bart Simpson’s face straight from The Simpsons archive, say Season 8, Episode 13, and lazily slapping it onto a Getty image of a horse—it would be theft. No question. I’d be standing next to you with a handmade protest sign and a “Save the Artists” badge. But that’s not what’s happening here. Not even close.
The way generative AI works is… weirdly beautiful. It doesn’t copy. It conjures.
It begins with chaos. Static. What we call white noise. Then it starts asking itself: “What in this noise could become a horse with Bart Simpson’s face?” It nudges some pixels this way, erases others, finds patterns in the randomness, and repeats the process. Again. And again. And again. Until, eventually, something begins to emerge. Not as a copy of a picture it saw before—but as its own hallucination of the idea you asked for.
That is obviously an over-simplification But the key takeaway is this: the AI doesn’t steal images. It creates them based on everything it’s seen. And do you know who else stares at a blank canvas and fills it with their version of a horse, or a face, or a dream they once had? Every artist. Ever.
No one springs out of the womb with the ability to paint like Rembrandt. Not even Rembrandt. He studied. He copied. He mimicked. He stared at what came before him and absorbed it all—until he could remix it into something new. That’s art. That’s learning.
The only difference with AI is scale. It does what artists have always done, just... so much faster, and with almost infinite data. It didn’t steal from Miyazaki. We did—by spamming prompts asking it to “make this look like Miyazaki.” That wasn’t the machine’s fault. That was ours.
And here’s the part people keep forgetting: a knife can slice onions or stab someone. A hammer can build a house or break a window. Every tool has potential for good and for harm. AI is no different. It's a tool. The issue isn’t in the code. It’s in how we choose to use it.
The ironic thing is, anyone with enough talent could already mimic Miyazaki’s art style. Plenty of artists can. Most of them choose not to. Why? Because art is about finding your own voice, your own story, your own weird and wonderful way to show the world what you see. That’s still true, even now. Even With AI. It’s just that we now have this magical pencil that allows anyone to draw anything. And you can't blame the pencil for what people use it for.
Right now, we’re all toddlers with a laser scalpel. We’re clumsy. We’re reckless. Some people are drawing masterpieces, and some are just scribbling all over the walls. But give us time. Give the artists time. Let us play. Let us explore. And eventually, we’ll start using this tool not just to reproduce magic—but to make new magic. Bigger. Wilder. Weirder.
So shout all you want about AI art ruining everything. But I’m done pretending I’m part of that chorus. I’m not scared of it. I’m excited. Not because it can copy Miyazaki—but because it can help us imagine what comes after Miyazaki. And that’s where the real magic starts.
