Why I don’t work on Ai projects.

Generative Ai is already deeply embedded in digital services and products we use every day, in a way that’s becoming increasingly hard to avoid. As someone who loves the exciting possibilities that emerging technologies can offer, I can see all kinds of places where machine learning has real potential : In science for example, particularly in pattern recognition.

BUT...

I'm a freelance designer who tries to work in a values-led way, and I have a number of issues with the direction in which Gen Ai is currently being taken. I feel that I need to make my position clear, from a professional standpoint.

So for the time being, I won't take on design projects primarily involving Ai-based products, or use generative Ai in my work.

Here are my main reasons why :

1. All of the major Gen Ai models out there have been built using datasets based/trained on content taken from the internet, a lot of which is protected intellectual property. I believe that existing UK copyright laws and principles should apply to this IP when used as training data for Gen Ai. That is: the burden of effort is placed on the person wanting to use someone else's IP to ask permission, and if required pay to use that IP. By default, allowing your copyrighted material to be used for training data should be opt in, not opt-out.

   A compounding issue is that these principles have already been broken, and that copyrighted IP data is already embedded in the major Gen Ai services in a way that makes it very difficult, it not impossible, to remove. Complaining that making Ai companies ask permission to use copyrighted material at this point would put them out of business is, frankly, not our problem.

   
   

2. At a time when climate crisis means we should be attempting to use less energy resources, global rollout of Gen Ai products is driving hugely increased resource use in data centres. An Ai query, relative to its utility consumes high amount of energy and other resources such as water - particularly for Ai services that generative images or video. Roll that out at global scale across Google, Apple, OpenAi, etc etc and you have unsustainably high resource use.

   You can read a very good explainer on Gen Ai energy consumption here : https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/

   
   

3. My last main objection is a little more philosophical, but to me just as important - regarding the use of Ai to perform creative tasks. I believe that a creative endeavour is not just about the end result; it's also about the process that led to that result - the understanding it brought us.

   Viewing creativity purely through the lens of outputs misses the point. We end up viewing creativity only in the context of the value of its end result (either monetary or social clout) - rather than viewing the process as a way we express our humanity and enrich our culture through learning, improvement, craft and experience.