Artificial intelligence has become one of the internet's favorite things to argue about. Scroll through social media and you'll find people celebrating it, calling it theft, or dismissing it all as “slop.”
AI has its fair share of legitimate concerns, from copyright and privacy to misinformation and environmental impact. Those issues deserve to be taken seriously. But before condemning an entire technology, shouldn't there be an effort to understand what we're actually criticizing?
AI Isn't New. It's Just More Accessible
Artificial intelligence didn't magically appear when ChatGPT became popular. Researchers have been developing AI technologies for decades. What's changed is accessibility. Generative AI now allows us to create text, images, audio, and so much more with just the click of a button.
But AI isn't just one thing. It includes different technologies that help computers learn patterns, recognize faces and images, and create new content like text, pictures, and videos. Large language models (LLMs), like the technology behind ChatGPT, are a type of AI designed to understand and generate human language. Depending on your device and the features you use, AI may already be part of your everyday life through facial recognition, predictive text, spam filtering, photo editing, etc.
AI Isn't Automatically “Slop”
Let's talk about creativity.
Low-quality AI content, distorted images, misleading visuals, generic graphics, and mass-produced content created without care or quality control are frustrating and deserve criticism, obviously.
Let's be honest: you can create garbage without AI. You can also create thoughtful, beautiful work with it. AI and bad design are not synonyms.
Take Canva, for example. It's a design platform that offers traditional design features alongside AI-powered tools. Using Canva doesn't automatically mean you're using AI, and using AI doesn't automatically mean you're skipping the creative process. A tool doesn't determine the quality of the finished work. The creator's judgment, skill, direction, editing, and attention to detail matter, too.
You don't have to like AI-generated art. You don't have to use it. You can absolutely prefer traditional creative methods. But AI is a tool, not an aesthetic. Criticize the actual work, the process, or the harm it causes instead of assuming every use of the technology is identical.
Not Everything Digital Is AI
CGI is a great example.
Computer generated imagery can be created using traditional modeling, animation, and rendering techniques without generative AI. The two can overlap, but they're not interchangeable.
Think about animated movies, video game graphics, and the visual effects in your favorite films. Digital artists have spent decades creating incredibly detailed worlds and lifelike imagery using computer graphics long before generative AI became accessible to the general public.
So, when you see a digital image you don't like, or something that looks unrealistic, do you automatically assume it's AI-generated? And if so, what are you basing that assumption on?
Not everything created on a computer is AI-generated, just as not everything created with AI is CGI. (That's an entirely different rabbit hole we can discuss another time.) If we're going to criticize a technology, shouldn't we first understand which technology we're actually criticizing?
What About the Environment?
Data centers consume electricity, use resources for cooling, require land and materials , etc. Their environmental impact is real.
But data centers didn't appear because of ChatGPT. They support cloud storage, online banking, social media, streaming, gaming, email, business software, websites, and countless other services we've relied on for years.
According to the International Energy Agency, data centers consumed approximately 415 terawatt-hours of electricity globally in 2024, around 1.5% of global electricity consumption. The IEA projects that consumption could reach approximately 945 terawatt-hours annually by 2030, with AI being a major driver of that growth.
Source: International Energy Agency — Energy and AI
AI is absolutely contributing to growing energy demand. However, blaming AI alone ignores the larger digital ecosystem we've spent decades building.
The better questions are: Where is the electricity coming from? How are companies managing water consumption? Are they investing in efficiency and cleaner energy? Are local communities bearing environmental costs without receiving meaningful benefits?
We should also recognize that responsibility isn't equally distributed. Individual consumers influence demand, but corporations make many of the decisions about energy sources, facility locations, and resource management. We can support technological progress and demand environmental responsibility at the same time.
In Conclusion:
You can dislike AI, prefer traditional art, question the environmental impact, and demand stronger protections for creators. What matters is that we understand the subject well enough to criticize it accurately.
Not everything new is good. Not everything unfamiliar is bad. And not everything that goes viral is true.
There are legitimate reasons to question it, but repeating a popular talking point isn't the same as understanding the issue. It's perfectly fine to have an opinion. It's even better to know why.
