‘Maybe I should write an article on Linkedin…. or something’, I think to myself. It has been a tough year, a severe car accident, two surgeries, and months of rehabilitation, and when things seemed to go a tiny bit better, I had to say goodbye to my dad, who suddenly passed away only a couple of days before my birthday. Because of all these things going on in my life, I’ve been living off my savings for quite some time, but I realize, I really have to get back to work.
When I started my company, 21 years ago, LinkedIn was a glorified rolodex of relationships. It was purely business with no room for personal stories. It was mainly about connections and promoting your services or products. When I look at LinkedIn now, I don’t recognize it anymore, so many personal stories from people looking for attention for likes and algorithms. Followed by comments from readers with strong opinions. I have no idea what everyone does for work anymore, what they have to offer, or why I should connect with them. It’s all about the algorithms and the likes.
I stare at the blinking light in the text box on Linkedin. The standard question in that box ‘What do you want to talk about?’ leaves me just as blank as the text box. No idea what I want to talk about. I want to talk about my dramatic year. I want to talk about why we creatives have suddenly been degraded to useless people because everything has been taken over by AI. ‘Hello, I am Mireille and I do graphic work, websites and illustrations’ no longer work. Nowadays, people use chatGPT to tell a very interesting life story about how they overcame something terrible but now they are really happy with the choices they made. I never made well-thought-out choices, I just kind of rolled through life by tackling every problem I encountered. That is how I ended up here. Where I am now. It did teach me lots of well-learned lessons.
I sigh deeply again. I do not like chatGPT, I hate the AI discussions. My brain continues to spin on the whole AI issue that has grown so terribly fast within a year, I sometimes wonder if there is still room for me as a creative person. Should I talk about that? There are already so many AI discussions. What do I add to that? In addition, I am also a bit tired of all AI- discussions. Except, obviously when it’s about the AI in the picture book that I illustrated in which AI is explained to children. A long, long time ago, I graduated College of Art and Design. In addition, I have taken courses over the years to develop myself. Yet, here I am, overtaken left and right by websites like Canva with the AI option.
Logos, flyers, posters, business cards. Everything clients used ask me for is now ‘Canva’ed’. Sometimes, a customer sends me a Canva design with the question to do it like that but then print-ready cause they don’t know how to add crop marks.
Next to my graphic design, formatting, and web design, I started illustrating children’s books about ten years ago. Simply because I love bringing a story to life. First my own books, later also for others. But then suddenly there is AI, who listens to a few prompts and comes up with the most flashy illustrations. Small mistakes like 6 fingers or 3 toes are overlooked because it is fast and cheap.
The blinker keeps blinking. Eventually, I decided not to say anything. Not to post anything. I am not ready for negative opinions. I click on the little X in the corner, close the website, and grab my drawing tablet. For now, I want to keep the world outside for a while by illustrating my new children’s book.