I Refuse to Let AI Replace me.

When I was a junior in high school in the spring of 2022, my AP US History class had a discussion about a company using machinery to replace its human employees. I don’t remember which company it was or much about what we discussed, but I do remember the relief I felt knowing that I was going into the arts and therefore could not be replaced. Even if film was a tough field to get into, I knew that my human creativity would always be needed.

On November 30 2022, ChatGPT would be released to the public, however, I wouldn’t become too aware of it until the following spring of 2023. It didn’t mean much of anything to me at the time. Sure, I thought it was cool that it could write in the style of specific people, but to me and many of my peers, AI was just a fun toy to mess around with when you got bored. 

It wouldn’t be until that summer that I began to think more deeply about it. I started seeing how artists online felt about AI, which caused me to look into how AI creates art. I found out that it essentially cuts up images from different sources and combines them into its own new image. It does this without the artist’s consent or credit.  It often sources its “art” from unethical places, and all the while its water consumption is killing our planet.

While I now knew that AI was essentially a thief’s toolkit, I didn’t really think it was going anywhere. In 2023, most of the products of AI were passable at best. But over the next two years, the tides would shift. AI would continue to improve, and while I could still sometimes spot it, it got better at tricking me.

In the spring of 2025, I decided to take a social media marketing class to become more well rounded. At the time, I was still in my bubble of artists and under the belief that AI was going nowhere because it had no value. That bubble would burst when I was not only asked to use AI for assignments, but also watched daily as my professor and peers proclaimed AI as the future and sang its many praises. It shocked me. As someone who spent most of my time with fellow writers and filmmakers, I didn’t understand what my marketing classmates saw in this AI. I’d try to tell them that I didn’t want to use AI only for them to respond “it’s our future” and be told that I needed to join in or be left behind.

After that, I started to realize that AI was taking over and seeping into every corner of my life. While before Google Gemini’s search results were easy to scroll past, now it had its hands in every result. I was seeing my peers use AI to not only help them with their homework, but do it for them. And worst of all, I was seeing fellow “artists” fall for its shiny allure. Authors and publishers had started using AI to write their books and Particle6, an AI production company, created their own AI replacement for real living actors.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what my marketing classmates kept telling me. That AI is our future. That I would be left behind. It makes me think of the final scene in Back to the Future Part III, when Doc Brown returns to give Marty his final goodbye. In the scene, Jennifer asks Doc why a note that said Marty would be fired in 2015 has now gone blank. He tells her that this is because “Your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it.” I don’t have to go along with the crowd and support AI because it is the future. I make my future. Even if AI is everyone else’s future, I won’t let it control mine.

I know a lot of people will try to tell me that I’m being old fashioned or anti-technology. They’re right. When it comes to AI, I am this way not only because I have to be, but because I want to. I don’t want to live in a world where art is something you just pop out of a machine, where all there is to read is a regurgitation of every other story that’s already been told. I don’t want to watch movies without real actors or writers and that only include a few AI in their credits. I don’t want to consume media just because it's there. I want to consume it because I think it will move me and make me feel seen. AI can’t do any of that.

I am not in control of how others spend their time and money. I can choose not to use AI in my work and tell others not to, but I can’t make anyone do anything. There will always be the possibility that my classmates were right and that I will be left behind. But even in a future where most media is created by AI and not humans, I will keep creating. Unlike many others, I enjoy creating for its process, not just for its product. Even if all the movie releases will one day be made by machines, I will keep writing because I love and cherish the time I get to spend doing it.

Yes, I fully understand that it’s possible that my creativity will one day no longer be needed. However, that can’t stop me from making things. AI can not replace me because I refuse to let it.