Been talking nonstop about this shameful episode for the past two days & this point needs to be underscored: It's the culmination of longstanding structural defects in our media, not simply the bad actions of bad actors. What happened to Jimmy Kimmel is a downstream manifestation of systemic probs:

🤖 Great piece about how GenAI generates amazing visuals. Critically, creators whose work powers GenAI want to be able to consent to having their work used. That core issue gets drowned in discussions about a related but distinct issue: copyright. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Actors, performers, audiobook narrators, voice actors — if you have stories please share them at [email protected].

I often forget this part because it's a pain but I need to do it if this is going to be sustainable: If you'd like to support projects like AI Killed My Job and Blood in the Machine, please subscribe, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription. My work is 100% reader supported.

Now *this* is how to do reporting on the latest for-profit edtech-AI snake oil outfit to promise hyperaccelerated learning through fully surveillant clasrooms and teacherless schooling all the way to big investor injections of capital and raids on families' incomes sfstandard.com/2025/09/19/a...

Premium Newsletter: There is no real market for renting out AI GPUs, and the majority of revenue comes from two companies - Microsoft and NVIDIA - the latter of which rents its own GPUs back from Neoclouds like CoreWeave so they can raise debt...to buy more GPUs. www.wheresyoured.at/is-there-any...

these anecdotes do a good job of showing how pervasive & insidious AI has become. i’m lucky to be in the right stage of my career, & right front-facing niches of the industry, to be insulated from AI distruption so far, but i couldn’t have gotten to this point if AI existed when i was starting out.

My dad was a storyboard artist for a commercial art studio for 30 years, and he'd tell me how the transition from alcohol markers to digital in the early 2000s was quite rough and led to a lot of labor intensification. But it's stories like these that make me glad he's retired.

This. At one job we had, the whole art department was slashed down to 1 person overnight cause or AI. I was also removed funny thing is, they ended up using none of their ai-generated designs and still kept using my concept art until the very end 🥹. It’s crazy

Just now, 11 state and city lawmakers were arrested by DHS police on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza after a hour of demanding access to the ICE lock up on the same floor. @thecity.nyc

Man, really sad to hear of the untimely passing of Tomas Lindberg, who fronted At the Gates, one of the best melodeath bands ever to do it. And this is undeniably extremely metal

Loyola Marymount University claims religious exemption with the NLRB, claws back recognition of NTT faculty union The sudden decision of the LMU Board of Trustees has left many NTT faculty in shock; the union plans a response.

The AI companies are woefully underestimating what it means that an entire generation has grown up listening to "Taylor's Version", and that fans now know what it means to respect an artist's intent & intellectual property. They're not ready for Swifties vs. Big AI. www.anildash.com/2025/09/18/t...

this is the first year in my career that I've not had a single new commercial opportunity, much less the stable workflow of years past. my stolen costume and character designs turn up next to ai-generated "worldbuild" inspiration aggregates, illustrated book covers + editorial are elusive. screams.

I'm interviewed in this. I haven't seen a steep drop off but I've seen a smaller one and most glaringly a change in the scope of work people want to hire me for, because they think them AI generating work ahead of me saves time (it doesn't) and that I can quickly tough that work up (I mostly can't)

this is a really amazing and necessary series on the loss of jobs in some fields, to AI

sadly I’ve been exposed to AI pitch decks. “Draw like this, monkey” they scream from washed out “faces” and hollow copy. I’m an asshole when it counts so I reject it with my whole chest, but there’s no surprise AI is popular with the laziest group of people: the managerial class

All this - but also especially in science illustration. Pay for quality work, but also for what is gained in the *process*. Archaeologists that have worked with @kjkillackey.bsky.social, for example, come away having learned their evidential trails much, much better. Say no to AI slop.

My day job is as a designer and printer. Why hire me, an actual human, when you can order AI slop on Temu?

Arts and Crafts movement 2.0. Either that or the "Butlerian jihad," take your pick.

please please please, humans, keep making #art

Yes yes yes. I've had editing clients consider using AI art for their cover, and I've encouraged them not to, and they've reversed course and found an artist and been so much happier. Most people do not want this, not now not ever, and we all have to stand together.

I've seen some reactions from struggling artists along the lines of 'I give up' and I feel your pain—but please do not. Most people don't want to live in a world where artists are automated away, art production is captured by AI firms. Most people hate this idea. Organize. Build solidarity. Fight.

Thank you Brian for getting these testimonies and first-hand accounts. Harrowing reading on how AI impacts artists.

Statement from the Writers Guild of America, West

ah, well

Full authoritarianism in under a year.

Have to admit I would never have predicted that the era of state media censorship would officially begin with the firing of a late night talk show host who made some milquetoast comments about Charlie Kirk

If the anonymous children illustrator reads this please feel free to talk to me if you need someone. I have been there and I wouldn’t be here now without support.

My own relevant anecdote is that I recently went to a local playhouse to watch a musical and all of the scenes just had AI generated backgrounds and barely any physical set. It was really distracting and distressing, especially in a place where you think they’d support real art.

Powerful piece. I knew what AI was doing to the publishing world, but I didn’t realize what it was doing to the art world. Painful.

Art schools buying into AI are contributing to the demise of working artists. “We won’t just ride the AI wave; we will prepare the next generation of creative shapeshifters who prove that the best future empowers humanity at every turn,” CCA President David C. Howse sfstandard.com/2025/09/17/c...

Thank you so much to Brian Merchant and the team at Blood in the Machine for letting me share my story 💜

A friend pointed out that right after I published last week's post arguing that the notion that X/Twitter was a "global town square" could finally be laid to rest for good, Elon felt compelled to tweet 'nuh uh.' Attempts to find his burner BITM subscriber email have so far proved unsuccessful

I'm still holding out *some* hope that I can manage to get enough of those few remaining jobs to barely eke out a living, but it's undeniable that the illustration job market has dried up significantly in recent years. It's depressing.

There is another part of it, too: The "AI Art" generator never talks back or suggests an alternative to make the work come out better. It just does what it was told to. And to a certain type of person that gets angry when they think their "genius" is being questioned, this is highly appealing.

Funny or not, it's absolutely true. AI furry porn is saturating the market.

The standard fare position of MAGA Republicanism is that people of certain genders and minority groups should be removed from public life. Their project is to ensure transgender people and migrants of color, for instance, do not live here with them. Those groups are not given a chance to disagree.

The only hope I've found is fostering a community of individuals who are anti-AI and ardently supporting each other. Opt out of AI every time you can.

Hard to think of a more on-the-nose encapsulation of how far the online speech wars have swung in the year of our lord 2025 than major U.S. corporations racing to fire people whose tweets offended Milo Yiannopoulos

there's been a few cases lately where local government have made ai based "illustrations" and gotten bad enough backlash to startle them (like the official acount for Nes county illustrating an open family gathering inititiative with a family enjoying a meal with severed baby heads)

I have seen my online sales dry up as Etsy and other platforms allowed the tide of AI slop to roll in. I don't even think that many people buy it, but it's harder for anyone to find your work when it's buried under thousands of listings of cheap printable images and clipart

One of my friends on Monday started retaining as a carpenter because animation/illustration roles have died off over the last year or so. It's tragic.

I work in career services and the people most struggling to get jobs right now are those in graphic design and illustration. So sad, a lot of these people are really talented and creative!

We seem to be on the cusp of a new patronage era of art. Where the wealthiest of the wealthy can buy their own private artists. While the rest of us only get to enjoy whatever slop gets churned out by AI.

"In the latest installment of AI Killed My Job" *Whatever happens to musicians will happen to everybody www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-ar...

I'm actually in the costume design forum that's mentioned in this article, and every day it seems like there's a new post along the lines of "our director generated this image and wants us to completely recreate it, what do I do?" It's so frustrating watching this happen

If you haven't been following along, Brian Merchant has been talking to people whose bosses are using AI (whether or not they actually automate those jobs) as a cheat code to fire people. This is a really great project. Highly recommend!

Jesus Christ.