Solarpunk Don't Need No AI
And a Sneak Peek at the 2024 Bright Green Futures Anthology
One of the commitments I’ve made, personally and early on as an author in the age of generative AI attacking the arts (visual arts, spoken arts, the art of words), is not just to refuse to use the plagiarism machine personally (and not just for stories but art and narration as well) but to double down on paying artists to create art for my works, paying narrators to bring their talents to making my stories come alive, and supporting those who do the same (I have a list of editors and cover designers who have pledged not to use AI in their work and been vouched for by friends).
It’s not enough. The onslaught continues. Artists (and many more) are losing their jobs to the extraction and exploitation that genAI was designed to make easy (and being based on stolen artistic labor, it just adds insult to injury).
I should do a whole podcast on this (and I will) but for now, I just wanted to affirm my values on this, especially when writing stories of a better future—ones that have sustainability and justice at their core.
You can’t write stories (or create art) of a better future using tools like genAI that are based on theft right now, today.
In some ways, you literally can’t—genAI is backward looking and only can reguritrate some pastiche of what’s already been created. It’s inherently not new. And it’s full of biases as well, and will give you a vision that hardcodes all the problems we have today. But morally and in a practical sense of how you build movement, you shouldn’t even if you think you can—using genAI is counter to the entire idea of a just, inclusive world.
I’m committed to this stance for moral and practical reasons, but what I didn’t expect was how amazingly generative (in the good life-giving, creative sense) it would be to work with artists and narrators specifically with these stories.
It’s not the first time I’ve worked with artists and narrators, for sure—I’ve been publishing stories, working with cover artists, and creating audiobooks since my first indie novel published in 2011. But context is king, and the joy of creating with fellow creatives while under the onslaught, and especially while envisioning a better tomorrow, just takes everything to a higher level.
This amazing linocut art for my Halfway to Better short story collection was a collaboration with talented nature artist Eddie Spaghetti. Check out his work (he offers classes!) and the story of making the cover—each of the short stories is seamlessly represented on the cover (and each story got its own cover!). Eddie literally carved this beauty, then magically inked it with color, and then made prints—I have one hanging in my office.
Watch Eddie carving the cover on this post on Instagram:
I also hired my talented friend and professional audiobook narrator, Emily Ellet, to record the audiobook version of the stories. You can listen to her amazing sample of the stories here.
Emily also recorded the audio for my darker Black-Mirror-esque anti-AI story collection that came out recently, Closet Full of Time.
For the art for Closet Full of Time, I worked with talented artist Yukimi Lumaris, and one of the great pleasures of working with an artist is that you get to see all the stages of creation. Different concepts and visions, and I get to have input into the process, but it’s really rewarding (and best) when the artist is excited and engaged with the work—I love giving them room to do what they do best. Make art. (Check out this tiktok featuring the cover)
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Which brings me to the Bright Green Futures 2024 Anthology.
First of all: surprise! A collection of hopeful climate fiction stories from the amazing authors who have been on the pod this year will be released in early 2025, and I can’t wait to share it with you!
And I’m working with a local artist to make an incredible cover for this very special collection. Gingerly Press uses vintage presses and repurposed salvaged metal & wood type blocks to print amazing art on 100% recycled paper. It is heckin’ cool! And when I told Lindsay I was putting together this collection of hopeful climate fiction stories and I needed a very special cover for it, she was all-in and excited!
So much so that she’s got a videographer filming some of her work and she wanted to feature our cover as a work in-progress! So we get this very cool sneak-peak of one of the elements that will be part of the larger cover (check out the video on Instagram):
More on this coming soon…
So, yes, I have a strong moral stance against using generative-AI in any of my works. And yes, I put my money where my mouth is in terms of paying artists to do their work. But the sheer joy that comes from being able to engage with artists, enable art of words and color and voice to be made, that my friends is what this is all about.
This is why we art.
And this is the future I want to live in and will fight for.
Peace and hope until next time (and I’ll definitely make a pod about this soon!),
Sue
I have been struggling with this. I am a visual artist, but I am not very worried about AI replacing me because the people that buy my art buy it because of me. But it is true that AI plagiarizes art and thus takes from artists, and it also makes you less creative if you use it for creative tasks.
However, I know solar punk also looks to incorporate technology, but what is the right way to use AI? Certainly not creative tasks. I could see it helping us with the tedious, the unsafe tasks, though. What do you think? Or do you think there is no use for AI at all?