Give It Away Now: On AI, Creativity, and Staying Human
I grew up in the Gen X era — a generation shaped by a deep skepticism toward authority, a stubborn sense of authenticity, and a soundtrack that often said more than any textbook ever could. One of those songs, Give It Away Now by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, carries a simple, aggressive kind of generosity: if you’ve got something inside you, something real, something worth sharing — give it away.
It’s a philosophy that feels newly relevant in the age of generative AI.
AI can now draft essays, paint pictures, mimic voices, design logos, and — soon enough — do things we haven’t even imagined yet. For artists, writers, and creators, the question is no longer whether to use AI. It’s how to use it — and what you owe the work and the world when you do.
I believe that if generative AI substantially generates a creative work — meaning it creates original content beyond mere assistance — you shouldn’t sell it.
You should give it away.
And not because the work is worthless.
But because doing so keeps something much more valuable intact: your integrity.
What Generative AI Is Good For in Creative Work
Used thoughtfully, generative AI can be a tremendous tool in the creative process.
It can accelerate your thinking, helping you organize scattered ideas.
It can push you into new territories, suggesting structures or framings you might not have considered.
It can challenge your assumptions, like a brainstorming partner who’s always ready with another angle.
It can sharpen your focus, by showing you — often painfully — what sounds generic or uninspired.
In that sense, AI is like a mirror.
It can reflect possibilities back at you.
But it can’t generate meaning on its own.
The soul of the work — the real spark — still has to come from you.
The Line Between AI-Assisted and AI-Generated
It’s important to be clear: using AI as an assistant is not the same as outsourcing your creativity.
If you create the core material — the ideas, the structure, the original expression — and AI assists you along the way, then the work remains yours.
Using AI to brainstorm, organize, edit, or refine is no different, philosophically, from using a calculator for complex math or a word processor for writing.
AI-assisted work, where the human remains the primary creative force, can ethically and fairly be sold.
But if AI substantially generates the work — drafting major passages, inventing significant content, or replacing core human authorship — then it crosses a different line.
In that case, the ethical move is simple: don’t sell it. Give it away.
Sell what you truly created.
Give away what the machine helped generate.
The real test is simple:
Were you the originator, or was the machine?
Empathy and the Responsibility to Protect Others' Work
Artists can’t ignore the realities of how these tools are built.
Many generative AI models were trained on datasets full of copyrighted images, passages, and styles — scraped without consent. Even if you, personally, mean no harm, the tool itself may be built on a shaky ethical foundation.
If the tech companies won’t guard against it, we must guard against it among ourselves.
That means:
Choosing tools that prioritize ethical sourcing whenever possible.
Being transparent about where ideas and inspiration come from.
Respecting the rights of fellow artists, even when platforms and algorithms do not.
Solidarity among creators isn’t a nostalgic ideal. It’s a necessary defense against a system that often treats creation as just another raw material to be extracted and repackaged.
Giving It Away as a Defense Against Exploitation
There’s another side benefit to giving away largely or fully AI-generated work: you remove the incentive for others to steal it.
If that content is already free, there’s no profit left for bad actors to chase. You undercut the exploitation economy before it can even stand.
But this can’t just be a personal stance — we need broader alignment. Just as the U.S. Copyright Office affirms that works lacking substantial human contribution aren’t eligible for copyright, we need a shared understanding that AI-generated content is not art, and shouldn’t be sold as such.
Let those pieces exist in the open — freely available, transparently artificial — while reserving protection, value, and scarcity for the work that is fully human.
Your human-made works — the novels, the songs, the paintings that carry your real fingerprint — remain protected and meaningful. And valuable. Meanwhile, the machine-made pieces circulate honestly, stripped of the false scarcity that pirates and scammers exploit.
In a strange way, giving them away isn’t just an act of generosity. It’s an act of strategic defense.
An imperfect one — yes. It means surrendering the utilitarian value of the work. But in doing so, you preserve its artistic value, and help protect the creative economy from being hollowed out by imitation.
Seeing the Problem Clearly
Of course, this doesn’t solve the core injustice commercial artists now face. Their ability to earn a living is being steadily eroded — not by a single theft, but by a systemic shift in how culture devalues creative labor.
Take Zhang Jingna, for example — a world-class photographer whose work was scraped and mimicked by AI without her consent. She’s not just concerned about theft. She’s concerned that audiences will accept a cheap knockoff instead of valuing her original. That people no longer care whose vision they’re consuming — as long as the image is pretty, fast, and free.
And that’s the deeper truth:
If someone wants a picture — not your picture…
If they want a story — not your story…
They were never really your audience.
That may feel like loss, but it’s also clarity.
Because now we know: the value was never in its use — it was in its uniqueness.
That’s the hard truth: many weren’t paying for your vision. They were paying for a result.
And now, the machine can provide one.
Which brings us, conveniently, back to the Gen X ethic I grew up with—the idea that authenticity meant saying what you needed to say, even if no one bought it. That selling out didn’t just cheapen the work—it invalidated it. That success, if it came too easily, might actually be a sign you got it wrong.
It was never about mass production. It was about making something only you could make.
AI can learn patterns. It can generate simulacra. But it can’t steal the essence. It can’t make the thing you make—by definition.
True art can be imitated, but it can’t be duplicated. Because real art is singular.
Everything else is just manufacturing. Pretty widgets.
Welcome to the real world.
And if that sounds extreme, consider what we’ve already allowed. As I wrote in my earlier post on the Frankfurt School, we spent decades commodifying art into disposable content. AI isn’t the root cause of that shift — it’s the inevitable consequence.
In the end, I don’t have a solution for the creative industry as a whole. But I have resolution for myself.
If any of my work is substantially AI-generated, I will give it away. I will not profit from it—not directly, anyway. If it serves a purpose—marketing, analysis, support—I may share it, but I will never sell it.
I will never mistake it for my art.
And neither should you.
And I will always take steps to ensure the AI-generated content I use is not plagiarized or exploitative.
That’s the line I’ve chosen.
Staying Human in the Creative Process
At the end of the day, the real question isn’t technological.
It’s philosophical.
Why are you creating?
If the answer is to sell as much as possible — that’s just business.
And AI will gladly help you, if you play your cards right.
Or replace you, if you don’t.
Either way, don’t call it art.
But if the answer is to say something real —
to leave behind a mark that couldn’t be made by anyone (or anything) else —
then you have to keep your soul intact through the process.
Learn to use the tools.
Master them when needed.
Use them for the things they’re appropriate for.
But never let them replace you.
If you’re doing it right, they can’t anyway.
Not in the ways that matter.
Javier
[Please note: The “Giving It Away as a Defense Against Exploitation” and “Staying Human in the Creative Process” sections of this post were revised and expanded for clarity and emphasis and the “Seeing the Problem Clearly” section was added on May 5, 2025.]
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