AI Is a Tool of Artistry

The day I was attacked, I didn’t save one life. I saved two: mine, and his. I paid the price of saving his life with three of my fingers. I don’t say that because I think I’m a hero. My decisions that day were made in nanoseconds, based on what I was experiencing, sensing and assessing. The reasons I saved his life are personal, and they are mine. I would make that choice again, and I’ve moved on.

But it means I can’t type. Every word I write, every song I make, starts with my voice, and AI assistive tools carry it the rest of the way.

I collect words. A phrase overheard, a sentence that won’t leave me alone. I write them down, sometimes for years. Then the fire comes. I go back, stitch them together, and suddenly I see it: the whole vision, complete.

From that moment, every tool I touch serves one purpose: bringing that vision to life. I write books where people die in a hundred ridiculous ways, because laughing at death is how I took my life back.

It’s like acting. When an actor steps into a role, they generate a whole world that only they can see, and then they make you see it too. That’s what I do. The world and the art live in me, and they are generated from me. AI assistive tools help me build the stage, and my fans reap the benefit.

Some people want me to apologize for my tools. I won’t. Nobody made the first painter apologize for the brush. Nobody asked Hemingway to apologize for his typewriter. And today, AI is built into almost every piece of software on Earth: the spell-check, the camera, the editor, the phone in your pocket. If AI disqualifies art, then almost no art made today qualifies.

If you ask high-quality questions, you get high-quality answers. Ask AI for something trivial, and trivial is exactly what you’ll get. It only gives back what you bring to it. Most people don’t understand how these models actually work. They imagine a machine that makes art at the push of a button. It doesn’t. It’s an instrument, and like any instrument, it sounds like the person playing it.

And the more I work with it, the more it becomes mine. Today’s AI tools remember: my style, my voice, my worlds, my rules. Every session builds on the last. Over time, it stops being a generic machine and becomes an extension of me, shaped by years of my direction.

I’ve sat in rooms with musicians arguing over whether a tool is “organic” enough, while the song waited. Half the time in any creative process goes to mechanics: working out the notes, the structure, the technical steps. That’s heavy mental work, and it isn’t the art. AI takes on that weight, so I can spend mine where it matters: on the vision, the feeling, the final call.

AI simplifies all of that, and the fan gets the very best of me, not my leftovers after hours of mechanics.

I understand that some fears are real: how these models were trained, and what they mean for working artists. Those questions deserve honest answers. Jobs are a real concern. But look at programmers: a programmer’s job has always been to automate work, including their own. They were among the first to feel AI’s impact, and the ones who adapted are now building with it. But fear of the tool itself? AI is only a disruption if you refuse to adapt. If you’re adaptive, it’s an evolution. Some will bury their heads in the sand like ostriches. The world will keep making art without them.

A coder who no longer codes is not finished. Coding itself is an art form. The best code is elegant, creative and deeply human. So when a coder reinvents themselves, they aren’t leaving art behind. They’re carrying it somewhere new. There is room to reinvent yourself into something better. I know, because I’ve done it again and again. I was a student. I did telemarketing, then sales, then sales in IT consulting. I worked in restaurants as a server. I worked in film as an ADR editor. I went back to school for business administration and systems, then law and philosophy. Then I came back to art, because I needed a way to deal with my trauma. The path was never straight. Every turn made me who I am.

The world needs more art, not less, because art heals. I know, because it is healing me. And I believe we are standing at the precipice of the most important, most transformative cultural evolution in human history. I intend to be part of it.

For me, these tools are not a shortcut. They are access. They gave me back my voice. The words are mine. The scars are mine. The vision is mine. AI is my brush, and I’m the one holding it.

So what is good art? Art that touches you, moves you, inspires you. Art that makes you think in a different way. Art that leaves you with gut-wrenching emotion, attached to a character long after the story ends. Art that makes you dream. That’s the only standard I hold myself to.

Judge the art. Not the tools.

— Jonathan Anderson