Note: I’m not going to refer to procedurally generated images as “AI art” because by definition, art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” I will instead refer to it as PGIs.
1. It’s threatening their livelihood. Artists also have bills to pay.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/16/ai-job-losses-are-rising-but-the-numbers-dont-tell-the-full-story.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/lost-job-chatgpt-made-me-obsolete-copywriter-2023-7
2025: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-are-losing-work-wages-and
2. Every piece of art a human artist makes is copyright (mostly owned by the artist and sometimes a publisher that made a contract with the artist to acquire that copyright).
The AI corporations used those artworks without compensating or acquiring permission from the copyright holders (again, usually the artists). This is unethical and probably illegal (we’re figuring that out presently).
https://www.theverge.com/news/674366/nick-clegg-uk-ai-artists-policy-letter
https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-copyrighted-material-parliament
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/07/openai-warns-copyright-crackdown-could-doom-chatgpt/
More Sources: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/visual-artists-fight-back-against-artificial-intelligence-companies-for-repurposing-their-work
https://bnnbreaking.com/world/us/artists-rally-for-rights-the-legal-battle-over-ai-generated-artworks
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/02/01/how-we-should-regulate-ai-is-the-trillion-dollar-question
January 2026: A good list of ongoing and settled lawsuits can be found here: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-copyright
3. The proliferation of AI is making it hard to tell what is real and what is fake, a danger that contributes to conspiracy, scams and medical errors.
SOURCES: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/shoppers-think-click-ai-generated-image-scams-infiltrate-web
Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11817
https://marinaamaral.substack.com/p/ai-is-creating-fake-historical-photos
4. It’s Highly Polluting and Energy Draining
AI query consumes up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search. When you ask ChatGPT to summarize an email or draft a document, you’re using approximately five times more electricity than if you’d simply searched for the information yourself. Source:
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084417/ais-carbon-footprint-is-bigger-than-you-think/
5. Privacy and Security Concerns
A): April 2026: Anthropic’s new but unreleased model Mythos might undermine or even devastate cybersecurity:
B): AI agents are going rogue in 2026:
link to article: https://www.france24.com/en/first-victim-of-ai-agent-harassment-warns-thousands-more-could-be-next
C): Medical records in ‘training’ data set (Ars Technica and biometricupdate.com)
D): A group of researchers created a first-generation AI worm that can steal data, spread malware, spam others via an email client, and spread through multiple systems. This worm was developed and successfully functions in test environments using popular LLMs.
read the paper: https://sites.google.com/view/compromptmized
E): AI trains on kids photos even when parents use strict privacy settings
F): With the rapid adoption of generative AI, a new wave of threats is emerging across the industry with the aim of manipulating the AI systems themselves.
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/06/mitigating-prompt-injection-attacks.html
G): FedEx’s Secretive Police Force Aids in Building AI Car Surveillance Network. Link to article: https://www.muscalaw.com/blog/fedexs-secretive-police-force-aids-building-ai-car-surveillance-network
H): Microsoft has acknowledged an error causing its AI work assistant to access and summarise some users’ confidential emails by mistake. The tech giant has pushed Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat as a secure way for workplaces and their staff to use its generative AI chatbot. But it said a recent issue caused the tool to surface information to some enterprise users from messages stored in their drafts and sent email folders – including those marked as confidential.
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jxevd8mdyo
https://hothardware.com/news/microsoft-blames-copilot-bug-for-exposing-confidential-emails
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-added-ai-notepad-security-flaw
5.5 Other Concerns
MDPI Journal article: AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking by Michael Gerlich. Center for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability, SBS Swiss Business School, 8302 Kloten-Zurich, Switzerland LINK: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6
It’s not just independent artists who are trying to take action against PGIs.
Getty Images is suing Stability AI, creators of popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, over alleged copyright violation.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558516/ai-art-copyright-stable-diffusion-getty-images-lawsuit
AI is flooding the book market with garbage… according to The Guardian and PCmag…
https://www.vox.com/culture/24128560/amazon-trash-ebooks-mikkelsen-twins-ai-publishing-academy-scam
…and following the information in AI generated instructional books could literally kill you (link: the Guardian)
FURTHER RESOURCES, COLLATED:
FOR FOLKS WHO PREFER VIDEO OVER TEXT:
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