Kayley was exhausted. She had been arguing with tech bros online for weeks now, trying to make them understand why AI "art" was bad. She had heard every single argument under the sun at this point.

"The artists agreed to this when they uploaded it online for everyone to see!"

"It's just like human learning - there's no stealing involved."

"This will open up self-expression to everyone!"

Ugh.

She felt like she was arguing with a brick wall. All of them seemed so smug, so eager to destroy her life and livelihood, and with no compassion for what Midjourney or DALL-E or Stable Diffusion might mean for the average artist.

The only thing Kayley had ever been good at was art! She had been the girl who got yelled at for doodling in class. She had taken her small high school's art elective three times, because they didn't have any other classes. She had gone to art school, and had worked her ass off, and was now a working artist making good money. She had a luxurious house, filled with art created by all her talented friends, and a husband and a beautiful daughter who was a bit of an artist herself!

How could all these guys not see how bad AI "art" was? How could they not understand all of the blood and sweat and tears poured into everything they had consumed their entire lives? Were they really so eager to sell humanity out, to turn towards soulless machines just because they could get infinite images for free?

Did they really not understand how important it was that real, flesh-and-blood artists, who had spent years developing their craft deserved to get paid for all of the good they provided? Did they really not understand that without humans none of those AI collage-makers would be able to get anything done, and that none of the artists whose works had been used were properly compensated?

It just made her sick.

It made her want to quit doing art for good.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Kayley had just been one of the many artists fearing the coming AI apocalypse, but she also happened to be one of the most stolen from artists out there! Everyone had quickly learned that if you wanted your AI art prompts to produce incredible art, you just add "Kayley Borowski" and you'd get realistic fantasy art with incredible lighting and vibrant colors.

Kayley hated it. She hated that if you Googled "Kayley Borowski" now, you wouldn't find any of the artwork she had poured her soul into on the first page. No, you'd get dozens of pictures by people who didn't even know who she was, except that her name could be used to churn out incredible art.

The worst part was the way people talked about the "art" they "made"!

So many people talked like they had done anything more than enter a few words into an art-stealing machine. They felt proud of something that took them two seconds of effort!

Kayley had been so depressed recently. She hadn't felt the desire to make anything new. Why should she? It was just going to be sucked up into some machine without her permission eventually, right?

She didn't even have the will to protest like some of her fellow artists. As the trending page of her preferred art platform became filled with people posting the same anti-AI "art" image, she found herself doom scrolling through subreddits dedicated to AI art. She hated to admit it, but a lot of the "artwork" looked good. She might call it soulless, but some of it looked better than some of her works! And that was just with the technology of today - she couldn't help but feel like the future was uncertain and scary.

Kayley wanted to cry. She wanted to spit in the face of every tech bro out there trying to "console" her with empty words, and tell her that she shouldn't be worried.

"Fuck," she finally said, when she saw that someone had run one of her recent pieces through img2img and made something that looked exactly like what was in her head. It was perfect. She hated that it hadn't been what she had made - that she couldn't have made that herself!

"I just wish I had never started drawing in the first place!" She said the words aloud, and felt so empty.

And then... something happened.

Kayley started to feel a headache come on. She rubbed her temple trying to relieve the pressure.

She saw images of all the projects she had worked on for the last 10 years, ever since she started working as an artist full time.

Every time she would see a project she had worked on, it would vanish, and she would no longer be able to recall what it had been like. What the heck was happening?

She had poured her heart and soul into these pieces, but it was becoming harder and harder to remember what any of them even looked like!

Eventually, she started seeing images of her time in art school. It had been such a time of healing for her, where she had finally found her own voice. School had always been a nightmare until then - but in art school, even though it was hard work, she finally felt competent, and started to feel herself improving as a person, feeling more competent and empowered. Something strange was happening as the images danced in her head, she had the sense more and more that the memories were disappearing.

Why were her memories of art school disappearing like sand slipping through her fingers?

Her art wasn't all she saw disappearing bit by bit. She saw all her moments with her daughter. Her first time finger painting - the origin story of all of the beautiful, clumsy pieces proudly hung on the fridge! Pictures that had made her laugh and smile. She saw the first time her daughter had called one of her pieces pretty. Kayley had cried afterwards when she was alone. It was just so beautiful.

And just like that, she couldn't remember what she had just seen. She had just been watching the life of... someone? Who? It had been so vivid before, but now it was a blank. She looked around, and could see the house around her rearranging itself - things were disappearing, and she felt a sense of deep loss, but she couldn't understand why.

Then, it was time for her husband to dance before her mind's eye. They had met at an art gallery, when they had both found themselves in front of an incredible Rembrandt painting, and were so struck they stood there looking at it for hours before they realized the other one was there. They got to talking, and soon became regular buddies at the museums, before they started dating, and then got married and then... Why was the next part so blank?

But as she enjoyed this trip down memory lane, she felt herself becoming more and more lonely with each memory.

As the last memory of... that man (?) flickered before her memories, she saw her house - no, her apartment transform before her. Had she really thought she could afford a nice house with her dead-end job?

But the memories weren't done playing. She saw herself in high school, her art the only thing that kept her sane. The way she expressed herself, and dealt with the stress of her parents constant disappointment in her. And then it was gone.

Middle school - while other people made friends, she was the quite girl doodling in the back, not really paying attention.

As this last scene played, and then disappeared into nothingness, Kayley felt the reality of her situation settle in.

She looked around at her crappy apartment. This was all that her crappy Walmart salary could afford.

Fuck, she hated her job. Every day, she felt more and more drained.

There was only one thing that got her through her days, and it was the knowledge that once it was all done, she could pull out her box wine, and drink alone on her bed as she escaped from her dull, humdrum life, into the amazing art that other people made.

Sure, being a mindless consumer did make her feel envious from time to time.

She had always wanted to start doing art, but she had been discouraged early on. There were just so many amazing artists out there, and there was no way she would ever be as good as any of them! She had never really been good at anything, her whole life. Some people found their calling, but all she found was abject failure and disappointment, time after time.

She had been going to therapy for years, to fill the aching hole in her soul, but even though the pills she popped every morning kept her from falling into a black hole and being completely unable to do anything in the morning, she didn't feel complete.

Kayley's therapist had suggested that she try simple sketches, just to help her understand her feelings. A little art therapy, but she had been too intimidated. She was a woman in her early 30's and she knew she couldn't even make good-looking stick figures! It was too embarrassing.

But then one day, Kayley had read an interesting headline while scrolling through Twitter.

Apparently, some artist in Colorado had won first place at a state faire with AI generated art. It made Kayley curious.

So she had done some searching, and found various sites where she could try out the models. The first time she had typed some words into the bot, and waited with anticipation had been one of the most momentous moments of her life. And then, as the pictures loaded, and she saw a beautiful landscape, exactly as she had imagined it! No, better! She knew she had found it.

The thing that completed her.

She started joining every Discord related to AI art she could. She felt like she was part of an amazing new thing that was happening in the world. She got to try out the prototypes for various models, and she was having a blast! All of the creative juices that had been repressed inside of her, decades of trauma and drudgery finally had an outlet.

Now, instead of waking up and dreading the day, she was starting to feel a little bit brighter each and every day.

In the evenings, she played around with AI art generators for hours, trying to get the perfect result. She started learning how to use Photoshop just to get her pictures that were 80% of the way to where she wanted them to the finish line. She posted the pictures she got online, and was enjoying all of the upvotes for the things she had made.

Kayley felt like she had found her voice.

She started eating better, exercising more, and cleaned up her absolutely terrible apartment.

She found out about some meet ups for people interested in AI art in one of the Discord groups she had joined, and started going to them. She made a ton of friends, and they all loved sharing their art and the prompts that generated them - loved the act of creating and collaborating with the machine.

She even met a cute guy at one of the events, and he had asked her out. It was the first time she had dated in years. He did have a daughter from his first marriage, but she was becoming more and more comfortable with the idea that if things went well with him, she might end up being a step-mother. She had never thought about motherhood before - her sad, lonely life hadn't afforded much hope for such things.

Everything was going great for her, better than it had been in years. No, better than it had ever been!

But then the backlash started. Kayley had posted a webcomic consisting of 150 images she had painstakingly crafted the prompts for over several months, and after she posted it it, the haters came swarming in. A bunch of whiny artists claiming that she was using technology built on stolen art.

Kayley did her own research, and in her judgement, what the AI was doing wasn't stealing. She tried engaging with a few of her naysayers, but they just wouldn't listen to her!

So she just decided to ignore them. She knew what she was doing wasn't wrong, and she was just going to continue to enjoy all of the new avenues that AI art had opened up for her. She just wished all the snooty artists who were hating on AI art for no good reason would understand how amazing the technology was for non-artists like her!