Introduction

Here's a question that’s been hanging in my mind for a while: Why do developers seem more okay with watching AI write code, while artists are furious watching AI paint?

Both are watching machines do what they spent years learning. Both are seeing their craft automated. Both are facing an uncertain future where their skills might be worth less tomorrow than they are today.

And yet, walk into a room of developers and mention AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Kilo Code or GitHub Copilot, and you'll get enthusiastic conversations about productivity gains. Walk into a room of illustrators and mention Midjourney, and you might witness a riot.

What's the difference?
Why does one group see AI as a partner, while the other sees it as a thief?

The answer isn't simple. It's wrapped up in history, identity, economics, and something much deeper… the very soul of what it means to create. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to answer it, but I will surely share my opinion.

Continue reading… 

Artists and AI

Let's start with the artists. Because honestly? Their anger makes sense to me. 

Art has always been about the human experience. In cave paintings 40,000 years ago, in Renaissance masterpieces, and now in modern digital illustration, art has been humanity's way of saying: "I was here. I felt this. I saw the world this way."

Every piece of art showed you something about the person who made it, the time they lived, what they felt, what they saw, what mattered to them.

Artists poured years into mastering their craft. Not just the technical skill of holding a brush or wielding a stylus, but the process of seeing. Learning to observe light, shadow, emotion, movement. Developing a style, a voice, a perspective that was uniquely theirs.

And that process? It was sacred. It was slow. It required patience, failure, growth, vulnerability.

Then something changed in our culture. We stopped valuing the process and started obsessing over the product.

We want everything now. Fast. Cheap. Instant. Scroll through Instagram, double-tap, move on. Consume content, swipe, next. The average person spends 2.5 seconds looking at a piece of art online before scrolling past.

Do we even have patience for good art anymore?

Companies started seeing art as "content." Something to fill space. Something to make ads prettier, websites more engaging, social feeds more clickable.

And artists? They became gig workers. Paid per illustration. Per logo. Per commission. Racing against deadlines, competing with millions of other artists online, watching their prices drop as supply exploded, and clients demanded more for less.

Then AI showed up.
Yeah.

AI image generators like Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion… they were trained on artists' work. Millions of images scraped from the internet without permission. Without payment. And without credit.

An artist spends 20 years honing their craft, building a portfolio, developing a signature style. Then an AI scrapes their work, learns from it, and within seconds, can generate something "in the style of" that artist. For free. Instantly. Without the self-doubt, without the soul.

That's not automation. That's theft.

And then, the final insult, companies started saying: "Why hire an artist when we can just generate something in seconds?" Remember when people tried turning Studio Ghibli into an AI filter trend? We wrote about why that felt so wrong. Because some things aren't meant to be reduced to a prompt.

Portrait artists, concept artists, illustrators, watching their job offers dry up. Watching clients ghost them for cheaper AI alternatives. Watching the market flood with AI-generated "art" that looks technically impressive but feels... hollow.

Art jobs are vanishing. Replaced by machines that can generate a hundred variations in the time it would take a human to sketch one draft. Freelance illustrators reporting 40% drops in gig availability. Studios downsizing their art departments. Companies hiring one person to "touch up" AI-generated images instead of commissioning original work.

And for what? So brands can pump out more "content"? So social media feeds can move faster? So everything looks the same, feels the same, sounds the same? Because it sure does. 

Artists resist AI because they see it for what it is: a system that devalues human creativity in favor of speed and profit. They're not resisting progress. They're resisting a future where art becomes nothing more than prompts and pixels. Where "good enough" replaces "deeply felt." Where authenticity is traded for efficiency.

And… I get it.

Developers and AI 

Now let's talk about coders. Because their response to AI is completely different. Or at least, that is my opinion. 

Programming started in the 1800s with Ada Lovelace writing the first algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a machine that was never even built. From the beginning, coding was about solving problems. It was about making machines do things. About efficiency, logic, and optimisation.

The first real programming languages came in the 1950s, FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP. Languages designed for scientists, mathematicians, businesses. Tools to automate calculations, process data, manage systems.

So, developers have always been tool-users.

They've always adapted to new abstractions, new languages, new frameworks. Assembly language made machine code easier. High-level languages made assembly easier. IDEs made coding faster. Libraries and frameworks made development more efficient.

Every generation of developers has watched the previous generation's hard-earned skills become obsolete. And they adapted.

Because for developers, code isn't the art, it's the tool. The actual craft is problem-solving, system design, architecture. Code is just the medium.

Developers are pragmatic. If a tool makes them faster, they'll use it. "Don't reinvent the wheel" is a mantra. Open-source culture, shared libraries, standing on others' shoulders. Build, test, fail, rebuild. No romantic attachment to the first draft.

When GitHub Copilot came out, developers didn't see it as a threat. They saw it as another tool. Like StackOverflow, but faster. Like autocomplete, but smarter.

Because AI doesn't replace what developers actually do. Yes, AI can write boilerplate code. Generate functions. Fix syntax errors. Create basic scripts. But it can't understand business requirements, design system architecture, debug complex production issues, make strategic technical decisions, or navigate ambiguous problems.

The real work…the thinking, the planning, the problem-solving, that's still human, and will always remain human.

And developers know this. They're not threatened because they never defined themselves by typing speed. They defined themselves by thinking speed.

So when AI shows up and says "I can type code faster than you" developers shrug and say, "Cool. Now I can focus on the hard parts." Well, most of them, let’s not be generic. 

Is it about money?

But… i believe, the real reason artists resist and developers accept isn't just about mindset. It's about economics.

Even with AI, software engineering salaries are high. Demand for developers is still strong. Companies still need humans to manage AI outputs. The job market hasn't collapsed yet. Developers aren't losing their jobs to AI. They're just changing how they work.

Meanwhile, art has been commodified. Clients see it as "content," not craft. The market is oversaturated. AI alternatives are "good enough" for most buyers. Prices have been driven down for years. Artists were already struggling. AI just made it worse.

The uncomfortable question: if AI coding tools got so good that junior developers became obsolete overnight, would developers still be this accepting?

I don't think so. The acceptance isn't just about mindset. It's about not feeling the pain... yet.

Where I stand in this story 

Here's my truth, and maybe it'll resonate with you. 

At Solveo, we use AI every single day. We wouldn't be able to produce this much content, this fast, without it. I, personally use it a lot. 

But I studied literature. I spent years learning the theories of how to read, to write, to think critically about language, narrative, meaning. And I will never approve totally AI-generated content. I hate the buzzwords. I hate how everything feels the same now. I hate that I can spot AI-written copy from a mile away. 

I use AI consciously. The idea is always mine. I use it to research tools and gather historical content. I double-check everything it tells me. I use it to improve sentence structure, grammar, syntax, as English isn't my native language. I use it to speed up the mechanical parts of writing, but the thinking, the conclusions, the voice… that's mine.

AI is a mirror and it reflects what we put into it. If you feed it generic prompts, you get generic output. If you use it as a tool while keeping your brain engaged, it can amplify your work. But if you abdicate the thinking to the machine? You get content that sounds like everyone else. And we don’t like it! 

And I'm exhausted by how samey everything has become. Almost every marketing email sounds the same. Every blog post follows the same structure. Every social media caption uses the same voice.

Where's the personality? Where's the weird? Where's the human? Where are… you? 

Andm one more thing,I've been researching AI's environmental cost, if you haven't read our blog on that, you should. Every query costs energy, water, carbon emissions. So even from a practical standpoint, using AI mindlessly is wasteful.

Use it intentionally. Use it sparingly. Use it consciously. Don't let the machine do your thinking. Because the moment you do, you've lost the one thing that makes you irreplaceable: your ability to be human.

What are we really afraid of?

Developers accepting AI because it makes them faster. Artists resisting because it threatens their soul. And the rest of us caught somewhere in between, using tools we don't fully understand, in a world that's changing faster than we can process.

Is this all spinning out of control?

I don't have the answers. But I think the question matters.

Maybe the real difference isn't about mindset at all. Maybe it's about what we're afraid of losing. Artists are afraid of losing meaning. That what they create matters, carries weight, is a piece of their humanity. Developers aren't afraid yet because they still feel needed. The machines haven't taken the part that actually requires them.

But what happens when they do? Will they still welcome AI then? Or will they finally understand why artists have been screaming?

Or, maybe artists aren't resisting progress. Maybe they're the canaries in the coal mine, the first to feel what's coming for all of us. 

And maybe we should listen to them.

Before we optimize away the last bits of humanity in the name of efficiency. Before we trade soul for speed. Before we forget why we started creating in the first place.

What do you think? Are developers being pragmatic or naive? Are artists being protective or just scared? Or is the truth messier than either side wants to admit?

Let's talk about it. Because, this conversation? It's just beginning.

Wanna hear more of our insights about AI? Read our blogs! 

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