Hello friends, this month I have finally gotten a new partner in my career online, a human artist! She's based in the United States and for sake of respecting her privacy I'll just refer to her as "Lisa", the name she goes by online on some platforms. I found her from Instagram via a Mutual
Friend on my personal Instagram Account. I reached out to her a while ago and a long time later she reached out to me. She actually reached out to me when I was doing some shopping at Spirit Halloween for costumes to use in my Halloween series.
A Gemini generated photo depicting a woman in her mid 20s.
She is a young lady and works to support herself and her family and her rates are reasonable when compared to the work she has produced. I have always wanted to have an actual human artist to do my work since I know that online it seems more and more recently with the usage of AI online and polarizing issues like Data Centers, AI Deepfakes, if AI steals from human art and the fact that AI is trained from human creators, at least on YouTube.
This image is an example of Deepfake of the lovely Emma Watson who is mostly famous for playing Hermione Granger. Emma Watson has never done photo shoots as risque as this and if you look closely you can see the skin pigmentation is a bit off between the head and the body.
I like AI personally. I have used it for the workflow on my channel and even utilized it for helping support and improve my channel, Enneagram Talk. When I started my channel, I had used the app ChatGPT to create images and even help with rudimentary research on the Enneagram and just as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. I pay for ChatGPT Pro. I liked that it could create images almost instantly withoout giving me any chance of risking copyright on my channel or using someone elses work and putting myself at risk. I still use ChatGPT for images at times and am impressed that it has the potential to create realistic scenes. It does at times scare me at how eerily similar it can render images that imitate realism.
A thumbnail generated by VidIQs AI software for my recent Livestream with my book, Beneath Stillwaters Bodies Lie which I did a live reading of.
In 2026, I have escalated to using Grok for videos and in particular wouldn't mind using it for B-Roll footage. I at that point didn't know that I could get b-roll footage from VidIQ until recently as of posting this blog. I had also found out last year, in 2025, that iStock is a website used to give people Stock Images and Videos for people to use provided they have a Subscription price. They also proudly declare that they do not tolerate AI generated content on the platform as they want to support human photographers and designers and artists.
I have used a mix of AI and Stock Images and used AI to help my workflow. I added the VidIQ Extension Browser to my laptop and use it for my Channel. They can generate thumbnails, score my videos, and are basically largely AI powered. VidIQ also offers Human Coaching for your channel that you can pay around $100 for they also offer an AI Coach. But I have always wanted to have a human artist in my corner since Day One, I just never knew where to go or who to find that is reliable.
Image above is from my Artist, you can get commissioned work from her at sales@egamedesigns.com
"Lisa" is an actual human, a young woman, passionate about her work and wants to share that with others. When we started talking in the parking lot via Instagram Direct Messages, she had offered when I said I make videos that she can work on my channel with commissioned artwork. I've been working on running towards improving my Channel this year and am working towards monetization. Granted now that the goals have changed dramatically post February of 2027, I wanted to push the website I have to essentially be my "moneymaker" until my Channel takes off.
I think AI is a phenomenal tool and as much as the world hates to admit it, AI has been improving our society and will likely stay in the midst of it. I would rather use AI to basically outsource the small workload so I can focus on the things I really want to work on, editing videos for examples. I'd also like to have a human team behind me too at times because creatively, there is a second peice of humanity involved. I think we as a world need to learn to balance human work and AI work. Especially since the world is more and more online and constant changes occuring in the world around us.
There is one thing that will constantly separate Humanity from AI. If I tell a person and AI to create an logo for my channel and describe what my channel does. AI can only respond with what I put into it. Human artists put in themselves and actually can take in more outside of itself than the what I put into it. While we may end up working with AI be it through Google Gemini which readily answers immediately after typing something into search, ChatGPT if they are toying around with AI, to Ask Studio on YouTube which does give data back to the user. Both can also be wrong in their outputs but one is wrong because the backbone is what is available online, a human artist can get it wrong because the perspectives were different points of view.
I appreciate the time you have spent reading this blogpost and I hope that you make an effort to wrestle with AI and Human Artists for yourself and that you can create an impact in the world around us.