On Using AI in My Creative Work: A Transparent Reflection

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I create.

Not just what I make, but how it comes into being — the blogs, books, reflections, songs, images, business ideas, teaching materials, frameworks, and creative projects that have been moving through me.

So I want to be transparent:

I use AI as part of my creative process.

Not as a replacement for my thinking.

Not as a shortcut around my own responsibility.

Not as a way to generate work without soul.

I use AI as a studio.

A space where I can think out loud, shape ideas, test language, explore possibilities, organize complexity, and bring what has been living inside me into clearer form.

And I want to speak about this directly because I know the use of AI raises real concerns.

Concerns about originality.

Concerns about authorship.

Concerns about artists and writers being displaced.

Concerns about bias, misinformation, environmental impact, exploitation, privacy, consent, and the way technology can be used to flatten, steal, manipulate, or mass-produce what should remain deeply human.

These concerns are valid.

I share many of them.

I do not believe we should be naïve about AI.

I do not believe we should treat it as magic.

I do not believe we should pretend there are no ethical questions simply because the tools are powerful or convenient.

But I also do not believe the answer is to avoid the conversation altogether.

We are living through a profound shift in how humans create, communicate, work, and make meaning. And like every major shift, it asks something of us.

Not just speed.

Not just adoption.

Not just productivity.

It asks for discernment.

For me, that means being honest about how I use AI and clear about what remains mine.

The ideas are mine.

The lived experience is mine.

The questions are mine.

The philosophy is mine.

The direction is mine.

The final choices are mine.

The responsibility is mine.

AI does not have my life, my grief, my joy, my relationships, my ancestors, my body, my memory, my contradictions, or my devotion to the work.

I do.

What AI offers me is not the source of the creation.

It offers a space of reflection, expansion, structure, and dialogue.

It helps me hold complexity.

It helps me move faster when the ideas are already alive.

It helps me find language for things I have been carrying for years.

It helps me see the shape of something before I can fully name it.

But it does not replace the creator.

A camera does not replace the photographer.

A recording studio does not replace the musician.

A loom does not replace the weaver.

A brush does not replace the painter.

And AI does not replace the human being whose consciousness, choices, ethics, and lived truth give the work its meaning.

That distinction matters.

Because I am not interested in using AI to create empty content.

I am interested in using it to deepen my ability to serve, teach, question, remember, and make beauty.

And still, I know this is complicated.

I know there are creators whose work has been scraped without consent.

I know bias can be embedded in the systems we use.

I know AI can reproduce harmful assumptions about race, gender, beauty, culture, body size, power, and worth.

I know it can be used carelessly, dishonestly, and extractively.

That is why my use of AI has to remain conscious.

Not perfect.

But conscious.

I have to keep asking:

Am I telling the truth?

Am I honouring the sources of my ideas?

Am I using this tool to deepen the work or dilute it?

Am I creating from integrity or convenience?

Am I staying responsible for what I publish, share, teach, and sell?

Am I remembering that human beings, communities, cultures, and the Earth are affected by the technologies we normalize?

These questions matter to me.

Because creation is not just output.

Creation is relationship.

Relationship with truth.

Relationship with audience.

Relationship with culture.

Relationship with the unseen labour behind the tools we use.

Relationship with the future we are helping to build.

So yes, I use AI.

And yes, I remain the author, artist, teacher, thinker, and creator behind my work.

Both things are true.

I do not need to hide the tool to protect my authorship.

And I do not need to surrender my authorship because I use the tool.

What I am learning is that transparency is part of the creative act now.

To say: this is how I work.

This is what I stand behind.

This is what I am still questioning.

This is where I am being careful.

This is where I am being changed.

AI has not taken me further away from my voice.

Used consciously, it has brought me closer to it.

Not because it creates for me,

but because it has become a studio I built to bring my remembering into form.

And that, too, is part of the story of creation now.