“The other day, I was finishing up one of my favorite artworks to date: A Baroque Style painting of Devi Radha, re-imagined as an 18th century English noble, draped in Bengal silks, with floral motifs and zardozi embroidery. Needless to say, I was extremely excited to share my work with the world. After making sure the varnish was fully dried, I quickly snapped some pictures and uploaded them to Instagram. Within seconds, my phone began pinging. Overjoyed, I began to check the comments, only for my heart to sink with every ping.

“Pfft, this looks like AI, lol.”

“If you wanted to use AI, at least mention it in the caption.”

“This is AI, only AI messes up hands like that.”

“Right? Are those fingers? They look like bananas, lmao.”

“AI could do it better.”

“Bro, if you want to pass off your art as AI, at least do it not so obviously.”

“Fraud.”

“People like you are the reason why real artists don’t get recognition.”

Suddenly, the painting I felt so proud of felt like a cheap knockoff. In a fit of rage, I threw away my brushes and kicked the easel. The canvas clattered noisily to the ground and knocked my varnish bottle to the floor. As I stared at the varnish slowly spreading, I could not bring myself to care enough or think about the amount of varnish wasted. Instead, I kept looking at Radha's smiling face, which now looked like the malicious grin of a con artist. I began thinking, what was the point of even doing art anymore? I mean, AI can do the same thing in seconds. Are my skills even required anymore? Why should I spend lots of money, sweat, tears, and time on something useless when AI can achieve the same, if not better, in seconds?” Anjan finally let the dam holding his bottled emotions burst. He pushed his phone towards me, it was a screenshot of all those nasty comments. My grip tightened as my anger arose.

How many Anjans are trapped today in the same vicious cycle? How many Dipankars put their hearts and souls into a painting only for it to be labelled as “AI”? How many Swastikas don’t believe in their skills anymore, because what’s the point? How many Rupanjanas have quit painting because, anyway, ‘AI can do it better’? How many more artists are we going to keep pushing and pushing, before they are finally lost forever? Just how long will we let this dystopia persist? Haven’t we watched enough sci-fi movies to know about the horrors of AI takeover? How long are we going to willingly ignore these red flags?

Forget ordinary artists like Anjan, even legends like Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of Ghibli Art, are not safe from the cruel crutches of AI. The recent trend of AI Ghibli art was so dehumanising. Imagine how insulting it is that despite stating in an interview how AI is an “insult to life” itself, people simply don't care and continue to use your legacy for dumb online validation. Imagine spending your entire life hand-painting every panel of masterpieces, just for some dub machine to do it in seconds without any real effort? Imagine refusing an Oscar for your steadfast moral convictions, just for Fascists to use your art style to fuel their heinous propaganda? Imagine refusing any sort of mechanization to preserve the authenticity of your craft, just for AI to completely take over the world through your work? Imagine people blindly participating in this trend so much that the server crashes? Imagine your life's work being amounted to nothing but AI-generated trash? Imagine what a grave insult it is to your legacy, a harsh slap to one of the greatest gifts of the animation world. Imagine seeing your career being reduced to nothing but a couple of likes and seconds of social media validation. Imagine standing helplessly as a bystander watching people tarnish your work. Imagine that it was you. Would you honestly ever pick up your paintbrush once again? Would the one thing, which was your solace, your break from reality, ever spark it once did? Wouldn’t every time you draw a sketch, you’d be reminded how “AI could do it better”, how “it takes AI only seconds to generate what you’d probably accomplish in hours, if not days?

Wake up, people, it’s time to face the truth. AI was meant to be a tool, a means to aid us in our work, not a way to take over our work. AI was supposed to help us in our craft, not do our craft. AI was never meant to reduce our worth, our art, or our skills, it was supposed to enhance them. AI was not developed for us to question, “Am I truly needed anymore?” or “What’s the point?” AI was never meant to replace humans; it was meant to help humans. Take a long, hard, critical look at this:

“Forbes also says that according to an MIT and Boston University report, AI will replace as many as two million manufacturing workers by 2025.”

“A study by the McKinsey Global Institute reports that by 2030, at least 14% of employees globally could need to change their careers due to digitization, robotics, and AI advancements.”

Is this still enough of a wake-up call? Climate change and globalization have already set in motion human extinction, and now we want to hasten the process by over-reliance on artificial intelligence? Humans have proved how they are the greatest innovators and the grandest destroyers simultaneously, for example, Nuclear bombs. Hence, is it truly surprising enough that humanity’s invention will also lead to humanity’s destruction? 

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