Yes to AI but…
At the start of April, I felt conflicted about the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence). I use it regularly for day-to-day tasks—grammar checks, market research, learning Italian—but I was frustrated by a trend I couldn’t ignore: AI-generated images mimicking the style of Studio Ghibli.
As someone who grew up immersed in Hayao Miyazaki’s world, I’ve always admired his deep commitment to hand-drawn animation. Seeing AI imitate his work so casually and everyone rushing to generate one felt very disrespectful from my point of view.
So I thought, why not write about it? I wanted to express my annnoyance and make a point.
But now, as April comes to an end, I’m sitting on a resort baloney reflecting on how quickly that Ghibli-AI craze faded and my annoyance subsided (Maybe because I am looking at this beautiful view??). Looking back, in fact, I spent most of my time this month hanging out with family over Easter, making friends in my new hometown, and catching up with a close friend here in Barbados.
And honestly, I’m even more confused now. What is the main point I am trying to make in this month’s post?? In this age of distractions, how do we decide what truly matters? What deserves our time and energy, and what’s just noise?
After rewriting this post more times than I can count, I’ve learned at least one thing: if something sparks a strong emotional reaction, it’s worth pausing and asking why. For me, the AI frustration wasn’t just about style or originality—it was about misuse.
From where I stand, AI is here to stay, and it’s already indispensable in so many areas. But I want to see it applied to solving “very hard” problems human alone cannot solve before it is too late, such as climate change, global hunger, world peace etc. Also, it would be nice to solve something “easier” like shorter flights, four-day workweek for all without pay cut, and robots that do laundry and fold it.
In other words: build AI that improves human life for all, use AI to give us time and energy back.
Time to connect with love ones. Energy to create and reflect. And maybe then, we won’t rush to use AI to generate artwork, novels, songs—because we’ll finally have the mental space to create, to draw, to write and to make music with our very own hands and hearts.
That’s the kind of AI I say yes to.
With Love, Vienna
P.S.: AI is overthinking my mindfulness watercolour doodle…
