In November, 2025, Elon Musk visited Joe Rogan to predict that AI will soon generate most of the world’s content. While we’re all captivated by AI’s dazzling feats, its true effects are already hitting hard—especially for creators like us, artists.
– My website hosting costs have doubled overnight, jumping to $791 for a three-year term.
– The hosting for my second site, built on Teachable for my online art classes, is about to triple—from around $500 to an absurd $1,668 per year. I can’t justify passing that increase on to my students, so I’ve decided to shut it down and abandon all the work I’ve poured into their platform.
– Then, to my shock, I got a notice from Creative Live—a platform where I’ve bought courses myself. They’re shutting down entirely. I’m guessing storage costs for their multi-hour, multi-day classes are a factor (they must be sky-high). Who knows what else is behind it, but the timing aligns perfectly with my own skyrocketing expenses.
I’m betting electricity bills are next—AI’s massive energy demands will drive those up for everyone.
Many artists, myself included, rely on part-time gigs like designing book or album covers and illustrations to stay afloat while honing our skills. Those jobs are vanishing fast, gobbled up by AI. Why pay an “expensive” human artist when a $30/month subscription can crank out the same work?
It’s reminiscent of how photography once displaced traditional portrait painters. Did you know Rembrandt was a portrait-painting machine in Amsterdam, earning a fortune for his genius? (Check out the video on his career: https://youtu.be/-WpakXGmLjA?si=r5jLYCqNBLaRRtma) Today, hardly any portrait artists command that scale of work or pay.
Should I keep ranting?
On a brighter note, I still find joy in generating a couple of AI images each day—purely for therapy. As an artist, it’s fascinating to watch how AI interprets the world and weaves in artistic principles. Of course, it’s all a reflection of human ingenuity at its essence.
I don’t buy into the hype around AI evolving into true consciousness, though it alarms plenty of people. At its heart, it’s just a sophisticated system, trained by countless humans on vast data. Our own consciousness—tangled up in free will, ethics, aesthetics, emotions, and love—is far too complex for any algorithm or matrix to replicate. No one’s cracked that code yet. :}
Sure, the idea of our world as a simulated game has some merit in a modern sense: it does operate on clear cause-and-effect rules. But that’s only half the story. What makes us truly unique—and non programmable—is that spark of individuality that defies any scripted simulation.
Far more concerning is AI falling into the wrong hands. We’re already deep in a surveillance state, and this is just the start. AI is ultimately a tool, and its impact hinges on the intentions of those wielding it—not the other way around. The goodness (or lack thereof) in human hearts will shape our future.
