Why AI art safety policies hurt independent creators
Discover how AI art safety policies limit creative freedom for indie authors and artists trying to visualize their fictional worlds.
Chat GPT wrote the following content, with light editing from Yours Truly.
AI art safety policies are too anal for creative work. Look, I get it. We don’t want deepfakes, fake news, or hyper-realistic renderings of public figures doing or saying things they never did. I’m not here to defend any of that garbage.
But what happens when creators—authors, artists, filmmakers—just want to depict their own fictional characters in a realistic, genre-appropriate setting, and an AI system slams the brakes on them?
That’s where we are.
I recently asked ChatGPT to generate a wide blog banner featuring Kaija Jokiharju for a post depicting Cursed Mage’s Spotify playlist. Kaija’s not a real person. She’s 100% fictional. Eighteen years old. Wields spirit and water magic. Attends university in a fictional country. But when I tried to generate a high-resolution image of her—something modern, a little gritty, no faces of real people involved—the system shut it down.
Why? Because it might look too much like a real person. No evidence. No confirmation. Just a blanket shutdown. Apparently, we now need to worry that depicting our own characters might be mistaken for identity theft or misinformation. TC’s add-on: Can I get a Jesus H. Christ?
Let’s call this what it is: Censorship by overreach
It’s a system so obsessed with not being misused that it’s nearly unusable for anything grounded in realism.
And before anyone pulls the “well it’s for your own protection” card—spare me. Artists, authors, and creators aren’t idiots. We know the difference between crafting a story and crafting propaganda. We don’t need a digital nanny to hold our hand while we build a fantasy world.
The irony? AI was supposed to unlock creative freedom. But as it stands, it’s starting to feel like the DMV with a paintbrush. Every idea has to pass through a bureaucratic firewall of automated “safety” that can’t tell the difference between a war crime and a book cover.
And here’s the punchline: if your system is flagging fictional character art as a threat, the system is broken.
I’m not asking for chaos. I’m asking for nuance. A tool that can handle realistic-looking images of imaginary people shouldn’t be shut down just because the lighting’s moody or the character’s expression is intense. We shouldn’t need to water down our visions or sanitize our worlds just to get through the algorithmic bouncer at the door.
If AI is going to play a role in the future of art and storytelling, it needs to get out of the way when we’re doing those things responsibly. Not because we’re reckless—but because we’re creators. And the more we let overcautious policy dictate creative boundaries, the more we risk turning the next generation of art into safe, sterile fluff.
And if that’s the future, you can keep it.
Hate AI art safety policies? So would Ella Kinnunen
Who the hell’s Ella Kinnunen? Let’s call her a libertarian who don’t know she’s a libertarian. But when you’re born into an elite ruling class that you despise and detest, especially when they infringe on property rights, you’re inching closer to boasting that lowercase ‘l’ beside your name.
Want evidence? Check out my freebie short novel, Deceived Mage. This book takes place two years before you meet Kaija in Cursed Mage, and it deals with Ella seeking to take a flamethrower to her father’s establishment.
