'I won't be using social media for a long time': Famous cat rescuer Sarper Duman abandons his online platforms after backlash from followers over single AI post

Blake Seidel • Managing Editor & Brand Manager

Sep 17, 2026 6:15 AM EDT

We spend so much time debating whether artificial intelligence is making our world less human that we sometimes forget to treat each other like human beings ourselves.

Sarper Duman is a good person, a true friend to the cat community, and he does not deserve the criticism he is facing.

Back in 2017, Sarper was already caring for 9 rescued street cats in Istanbul. By 2019, that number had grown to 19, and he started to really gain some meowmentum with his online presence. He went viral for videos of his cats curled up beside him while he played the piano, or playing with him. Soon enough, millions of people were invested in his feline family. It was so heartwarming to watch from afar! Finally, a good thing is happening to a good purrson. It felt right.

Fast forward to today, and things have taken a heartbreaking turn. After losing his beloved cat Reşat, Sarper shared an AI-generated music video. Besotted with grief, he did not have the finances or mental strength to produce a real music video, so he generated something in order to save money and hopefully raise more money for the remaining cats under his care. The response was nothing like what he hoped for.

While still grieving Reşat passing over the rainbow bridge, he faced a wave of harsh criticism over his decision to use AI. In one post. After thousands of posts over nearly 10 years that were based on making the world a better place. On September 13th, he announced that he was stepping away from Instagram. And honestly, I think this deserves a much bigger conversation.

I understand why people are concerned about AI - artists worry about their work being used without purrmission, people worry about authenticity, jobs, and the environmental costs of generating endless content. These are legitimate concerns that deserve serious discussion, but when did criticizing a technology become an excuse to forget the human behind the screen?

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I have been following Sarper Duman's story for years. And if there is one thing that I know about this man, it is that he loves his cats. Not just the cute, fluffy, purrfectly healthy ones. He cares for the injured ones. Gives the abandoned ones a home. He scrapes the money together for the ones who need expensive veterinary care, has seemingly endless patience, and is always someone willing to give a cat a second chance.

Sarper spent years rescuing animals, sharing his music, and building a community around kindness. One AI video should not erase those years of compassion. The internet has become a place where we can forget someone's entire history the moment they do something we disagree with. And maybe that's the saddest part - the piece of technology that connected the world has separated us more than ever.

Dear followers, this is my last post here, and I won't be using social media for a long time. I've been here for about ten years. Long before this page happened to become popular, my life was already spent helping animals. Once the page grew, a lot of people came to know me, and many of them — counting on the size of my following — kept coming to me for help with animals in trouble. I turned very few of them away, because I was always someone who couldn't turn away an animal in need. Over the ye

Not ai slop, so sad to see from this account Yanıtla Gizle Çevirisine bak 19

Eight months ago Reşat was diagnosed with cancer, and I fought for eight months. One month ago, the being I loved most in this life, my dearest cat Reşat, dd. I have never managed to describe what that grief has been like, and I still can't. Even in the middle of it, because there are dozens of animals under my care, I wrote a few pieces of music. And because I get piled on every time I post about donations, I tried to keep going by selling those compositions to pay off vet debts, to keep paying

yorum yaptı: are we serious.. you're resorting to Al because "no one saw it"? who the cares about who sees it if you truly are doing this for the pets you love and lost? oh my god humanity is becoming so dense it's disgusting 6d ♡ Yanıtla

The concerns from the anti-AI crowd are not just coming from a handful of angry internet users. A 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 52% of American adutls say they are more concerned than excited about AI in their daily lives, compared with only 9% of people who feel the opposite.

But somewhere between criticizing the technology and criticizing the people who use it, I think we're missing a very impurrtant distinction: there is a difference between holding companies accountable for how they develop AI and attacking a purrson who experiments with AI one time, with a huge karmic debt of pawsitivity.

We can care about artists and creators without being mean, we can demand transparency without turning every comment section into a courtroom, and we can acknowledge that AI has serious consequences without deciding that everyone who touches it is automatically a terrible human being.

The internet has always loved a good witch hunt, but if our goal is to protect human creativity and compassion, should we remember to extend a little of that compassion to actual humans, too?