Brands caught using AI have continued to face backlash from consumers. Last month, Guess sparked outcry online when it featured an AI-generated model in an advertisement that appeared in Vogue.
So even outside of any obvious mistakes made by AI tools, some artists say their clients simply want a human touch to distinguish themselves from the growing pool of AI-generated content online.
To Todd Van Linda, an illustrator and comic artist in Florida, AI art is easily discernible, if not by certain telltale inconsistencies in the details, then by the plasticine effect that defines AI-generated images across a range of styles.
“I can look at a piece and not only tell that it’s AI, I can tell you what descriptor they used to generate it,” Van Linda said. “When it comes to, especially, independent authors, they don’t want anything to do with that because it’s so formulaic, it’s obvious. It’s like they stopped off at Walmart to get a bargain cover for their book.”
Authors come to him, he said, because they know that AI-generated art fails to capture the hyperspecific “vibe” of their individual story. Often, his clients can only give him a rough idea of what they want. It’s then Van Linda’s job to decipher their preferences and create something that draws out the exact feeling each client seeks to evoke from their art.
Van Linda said he also gets approached by people who want him to “fix” their AI-generated art, but he avoids those jobs now because he has realized those clients are typically less willing to pay him what he believes his labor is worth.
“There would be more work involved in fixing those images than there would be in starting from a clean sheet of paper and doing it right, because what they have is a mismatched collection of generalities that really don’t follow what they’re trying to do,” he said. “But they’re trying to wedge the square peg into the round hole because they don’t want to spend any more money.”
The low pay from clients who have already cheaped out on AI tools has affected gig workers across industries, including more technical ones like coding. For India-based web and app developer Harsh Kumar, many of his clients say they had already invested much of their budget in “vibe coding” tools that couldn’t deliver the results they wanted.
But others, he said, are realizing that shelling out for a human developer is worth the headaches saved from trying to get an AI assistant to fix its own “crappy code.” Kumar said his clients often bring him vibe-coded websites or apps that resulted in unstable or wholly unusable systems.
His projects have included fixing an AI-powered support chatbot that gave customers inaccurate answers — and sometimes leaked sensitive system details due to poor safety measures — and rebuilding an AI content recommendation system that frequently crashed, gave irrelevant recommendations and exposed sensitive data.
“AI may increase productivity, but it can’t fully replace humans,” Kumar said. “I’m still confident that humans will be required for long-term projects. At the end of the day, humans were the ones who developed AI.”