The Least You Can Do: Pay the Women AI Is Replacing
A practical ethics for people who use AI and know better
AI isn’t replacing people in the abstract. It’s replacing specific people, in specific industries, right now. And if you look at which industries those are — commercial illustration, editorial art, character design, book cover painting, fan art — you’ll notice something. They skew heavily female. This piece is about that.
If you’re waiting for the piece about men, it may be coming. But we’re talking about women right now, because the women are the ones losing the work right now, and most of the people replacing them with AI tools know it and are doing it anyway.
To be clear about what this piece is not: it’s not an argument against people making a living. It’s not an argument against cottage industries, against self-published authors, against small creators using every tool available to survive in an economy that has never been particularly interested in their survival. People making a living is never the problem. Hoarded wealth is the problem. Indifference is the problem. Those are the things worth getting angry about — and they’re what this piece is actually about.

















