(This is my twenty-second post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
Luke Plunkett has written a piece over on Aftermath that’s formatted as an open letter to small businesses using AI to advertise. It does not pull a lot of punches. Profanity is involved.
The article mentions other options that could have been explored, primarily hiring a local graphic designer and/or photographer. (Do you know you have local graphic designers and photographers? They’re everywhere!)
The response I get when I say something similar is that artists are too expensive, and my knee-jerk reaction is they’d rather lose a lot of customers than pay an artist what they’re worth. It’s an odd business choice, but it’s your business.
But this isn’t helpful. People who don’t have the money don’t have the money, and some small businesses are struggling a lot, especially right now.
Instead, I suggest people who can’t afford artists should do the unthinkable thing that’s older than AI (No, not art theft. The other unthinkable thing older than AI.):
They could just make it themselves.
Cameras are ubiquitous, they likely already have one on their phone and another built into their computer. You take a photo of your business, slap some text over it with a free, web-based editor, and call it a day.
Heck, you could manage this in a copy of MS Paint that was made before Copilot got integrated into it.
“But it won’t look nice,” they say. More frequently, I’m told “Oh, I’m no good at art.”
I have a 4 year art degree and close to 30 years experience teaching it. I say this so that you understand my next statement has some weight and authority behind it: Art that shows effort and interest was applied will always be better than “art” made by writing a prompt. Your “bad” art isn’t actually bad, and the AI “art” isn’t actually art.
(This knowledge is why I can honestly praise a 5 year old for their scribble drawing. At their skill level it’s an amazing accomplishment if their “circle” only has 7 corners. Heck, freehand circles are challenging for adults!)
Sure, the text might not be aligned professionally, and maybe your thumb is visible on the edge of the photo, and it looks like your favorite fonts are Comic Sans and Papyrus, but you know what? That work is yours, and those are mistakes that will be less common the next time you try.
AI art for a business says that not only will you not pay an artist, you don’t want artists to be your customers. Unskilled art says you’re still learning. Not everyone is kind to beginners, true, but they’re wrong for being unkind.
I’m not saying you have to abandon one job to pick up Graphic Design in order to avoid AI use. I’m saying the democratization of digital art creation happened decades ago, and you don’t need a slop factory to make something that’s good enough, so long as you’re willing to try.
So try.