With the rise of AI slop in all aspects of life, this insult to artistry has even infiltrated the tattoo world. If you are paying money for an artist to design a custom piece of art for you, or even recreate repeatable flash, why on earth would you want them to use a computer to do the art part for them?

If you are looking at getting a tattoo but are not artistically inclined, no matter how badly you want to, do not use something like chatgpt to come up with your tattoo concept. Simply send whatever prompt you were going to use to your artist and let them do what they do best! That’s why you’re paying them after all. Another reason not to use AI when looking for ideas and concepts is AI will create images that are full of mistakes especially when doing natural themes like plants and animals, and AI won’t take into consideration the flow, placement, sizing detail and aging of your tattoo. Your artist does. This is what the walls and ads of a good shop should look like. If your artist isn’t even making their own art, ask yourself why you would want to go to them.

While the vast majority of tattooers are heavily against using AI at all, never mind for their creative work, this is what you can avoid when looking at shop or artist online portfolios. If their page looks like this, avoid at all costs! Your shop or artists page should look like a human did the work on everything from designing the tattoos to flyers, ads, and of course all tattoo flash. These are examples of what to avoid when looking at a shops work, the owner clearly relies heavily on AI and cannot even be bothered to take the time to create real art for their ads. Note the generic graphics that all have an over polished and overused look, from background to text and captions that look like they were never seen by human eyes before posting.

Besides the obvious of not using robotics to be creative for you, you might be asking why you should avoid AI? There is growing research including from MIT showing that “excessive reliance on AI” contributes to declining critical thinking abilities. AI is literally making humans dumber and less artistic. Then there’s the environmental impact of AI. AI data centres use electronics built from precious metals often mined illegally in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by children and other at risk people. Data centres also use incredible amounts of water, water that is becoming more and more scarce thanks to climate change and global waste. On top of using our precious water, these data centres leak metals like mercury and lead into water sources and environments that then get into our ecosystems and our own bodies essentially poisoning us.

So if you aren’t sure what to get tattooed, don’t ask AI, ask your artist! And if you see a shop or artist using AI, bully them online and then avoid them like the plague.

Protest your local data centre, fuck AI!