it’s hard to find even the beginning of any words to explain the difference between my life now and my life a year ago as it relates to generative ai. this was the year of ai imagery. i knew it would be since january but a lot of folks are just now finding out. i’m not here to have any arguments, or change any minds. i’m just here to share my joy with the kind, accepting community i have ended up with here on instagram. i wanted to turn ideas into pictures my whole life, and in the last three years i got really good at doing it on a computer using tools like photoshop, blender, and others with fairly intimidating skill floor/ceiling ratios that kept me from learning them for ages . i got good at these systems eventually, and i use them now to make art. i do this because expressing my imagination and my feelings makes me feel whole. makes me feel human. everyone deserves that. DALLE2 came out in april or so, and i’ve been supported in countless ways as an illustrator and as an artist by the wonderful team at openai since i reached out on day one. they’re still expanding accessibility and effectiveness of this system, and their goal is plainly to help people see the images in their heads. we are going to see a lot more things become easy. i’m excited for it. i welcome it. i’m pro-sharing and anti-gatekeeping and i search high and low for kindness which aligns with that. there are a lot of hard questions to answer and i am deeply proud to know some of the brilliant folks working hard to answer them safely, ethically, equitably, and efficiently. thank you endlessly to natalie, joanne, karen, manu, josephine, jonathan, ben, jake, romeo, vishal, elie, and natalie again.