It’s Possible to Use AI Ethically for Creative Work: Here’s How

The Age of Artificial Intelligence — or AI — is here. Along with it has been the rise of programs like ChatGPT and DALL- E and the discussion about ethical AI use. Especially when it comes to creative work.

Popular YouTubers are using programs like Midjourney to create art for their videos and students are using ChatGPT to “help” them write their term papers. Even large corporations are integrating AI programs to boost productivity in creating images, writing prompts and aid in research and development. With all that said, however, large swaths of the population hold a dimmer view. 

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center shows the average American is wary about AI. They’re concerned about its impact on creative industries, issues concerning plagiarism and deceptive practices in professional work. While some people are optimistic, other segments of American society worry about the impact AI will have on various industries, schools and other facets of daily life. There are many debates about how to legislate these new AI programs and what role they should play, but it all comes back to one fact: AI is here to stay.

So what does that mean for you? Whether you’re part of a big company, a small business owner, an artist of any stripe or just a consumer, what are the best ways to deal with AI? There are ethical and effective ways AI can help business owners and independent contractors, and we’re going to be looking at some of them.

Issues With Ethical AI Use in Creative Fields

Artists and content creators are one of the groups that are likely to be wary or outright hostile to AI use in their fields. And it’s not hard to see why. Most AI programs can create some type of media. ChatGPT and Writer can create short stories, poems, essays and other written material, while programs like Midjourney and DALL- E can create images or short videos based on written prompts from users. Other programs like Suno can even create music.

Some Pro-AI crowds denounce artist concerns as merely being afraid of new technology or competition. However, there’s more to content creators’ objections than a mere resistance to new tech. The human element, to many, is an essential part of any art that AI cannot replicate. It might be possible for ChatGPT to write this article, for example, but then you would miss out on this reporter’s wit.

AI in Everyday Life

There are also more practical arguments. All AI programs that generate content whole cloth do so by studying other material; the content they create is essentially several machine-generated derivatives of work from other people. If you are an artist that shares their work online, at this very moment, an AI program could be copying your style and learning from your works, with no input from you.

This has caught the ire of large media corporations like Disney and Universal, who are currently in litigation against Midjourney for copyright infringement. Artists also argue AI has given companies leeway to cut costs, using AI for free instead of commissioning real people to make original art, such as when Hasbro was caught using AI artwork for their Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering franchises after previously reassuring fans they would not use AI art.

With written material, the use of AI has become a particular headache for schools and universities. A staggering 22 million student essays were found to be partially or fully written using AI out of 200 million turned into universities, a 1 out of 10 statistic that is steadily growing. Using AI to write essays or other assignments is a clear violation of academic ethics, and passing off any written work that isn’t your own, even AI written, is a clear case of plagiarism.

So what’s to be done? Can artists and writers of all stripes live with AI in relative harmony? Possibly. Achieving ethical AI use in a creative field will come from striking a balance — to support creative works, not replace them. But first, what benefits are there for creative types in using AI?

Benefits of Using AI In Creative Fields

The market in 2025 is as volatile as it has been for the past half-decade. If you are in the position of pursuing a career in a creative field or running a small business, you need to keep up to date with the latest tools out there to help boost your productivity — and that now includes AI. 

Freelance creators and small businesses are making use of AI programs in a number of ways. Writers can use ChatGPT as a sounding board for new ideas, or asking writing programs to create outlines for new projects. Some designers use AI art programs to create concepts or color palettes, while other programs, like Jasper AI, are designed to help businesses create marketing content.

The trick, of course, is to treat these AI programs as a tool. It’s a component in a project, not a magic wand that can just create whatever you want with a hastily written prompt and one click. That sort of thinking can lead to marketing disasters like the now-infamous Willy Wonka Experience, a failed pop-up experience in 2024 that relied on all-AI images for marketing and an AI-generated script. 

When using AI, think of it as your own personal beta tester or R&D department. It can help you realize ideas or concepts that you have, but whatever the AI programs give you, it falls to you to further refine the concept using your own skills to make something unique. No matter how good you may think an AI-generated prompt looks, it’s not a completed piece until you have made it truly your own.

Where to Draw the Line: Ethics vs. Shortcuts

If AI is a tool, it’s important to know what situations warrant its use. As the old saying goes, if all you use is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. We’ve already covered some situations where using AI is both helpful and ethically responsible: using it for developing concepts instead of a final product is the best-case scenario in most situations.

As previously discussed, plagiarism is one of the biggest issues surrounding AI use. If you use AI for a project, treat it as a source for an essay. It should be properly acknowledged as part of the process, and it should not be your only inspiration. An over-reliance on AI has already shown detrimental effects, not just on a professional level, but developmental as well.

Recent studies have shown that an over-reliance on AI for school assignments has resulted in lower brain activity in students. It has created an atmosphere of distrust between teachers and students, and this lack of trust can also be seen in professional settings as well. As mentioned earlier, companies that interact with AI without disclosing that to their customer base risk alienating them, while others are actively engaged in protecting their copyright from being misused by these programs without permission.

Possible Bias

There is also a large issue with bias working its way into AI programs. Grok, the AI program integrated into X, formerly Twitter, has fluctuated wildly in its political leanings and fact-checking abilities based on the biased sources it learns from. It is far from the only one, as companies creating AI models and programs are actively working to address the issue. Just like your teacher warned you about using Wikipedia in your research projects, you must make sure to verify anything that comes from an AI, as you won’t always know where the program is getting its information from.

AI use in business and the creative process is a tangled, complicated issue. But, when engaging with AI, here are a few questions to keep in mind when creating something with an AI program:

• Did you add original thoughts? What parts of the end product were made by an AI, and what was your contribution? 
• Would you feel comfortable disclosing AI use to a client or employer? If you’re not willing to stand by your work, why not?
• Did you verify the output’s accuracy? Can you trust the programs you’re using, and if not, why use the program?

How to Spot AI-Generated Content

Just as you should be careful in using AI for your own projects, it’s important for you to be able to spot AI-generated content when you see it. Many people in online spaces pass off AI-generated images or written material as their own work. If you are paying for a commission for original work, you want to make sure you’re getting what you pay for. There are a few tell-tale signs for both written and visual media created by AI.

AI Red Flags for Visual Media

• Hands. Hands are notoriously difficult to draw for artists in any medium, and AI also struggles with it. Watch out for extra digits, strange proportions and nonsensical positioning.
• Lighting. Perspective and lighting are also difficult skills to master for an artist. If lighting is coming from multiple points, it may be AI.
• Surreal Textures. If the image has a strange, nonsensical bent to it, it may be related to AI. As AI only copies without context, it will mix together elements without rhyme or reason if it doesn’t properly understand its prompt. 
• Misspelled Words. If the image includes a sign, word bubble, or other wording anywhere, watch the spelling. AI programs creating artwork will only consider wording as aesthetic, and often jumble up words or misspell them, often by repeating letters.
• Style. Most art that AI generators learn from are readily available professional photos and digital art. Watch for airbrushed quality, lack of blemishes, a certain, plastic feel or over-developed details.

AI Red Flags for Written Media

• Repeated Phrases. Many writers have favorite words or repeated phrases, but it is a habit professional writers try to edit out. AI programs have picked up this habit as well, so if certain phrases, particularly when it comes to descriptive phrases, keep cropping up, verify the source of the document.
• Misspelled Words. Just like visual media, if words are misspelled, it may be a sign of AI involvement, especially if the misspelling is because of repeating letters.
• Overly Polished Grammar. While most professionals aim to keep their diction and grammar clear, most human writers have certain tics that form part of their style. If a document has technically perfect grammar that still comes across as bland or impersonal, it may be created by AI.
• Vague Claims. AI programs make for poor debaters. If the writing isn’t making clear points of argument or can’t make definitive claims even when it quotes statistics, you may be looking at AI.

Best Practices For Ethical AI Use

Several publications have written about ethical AI use and responsibility. Like most of them, this article from Plan Adviser emphasizes one principle: transparency. If you make AI part of your creative process, then it is your responsibility to disclose that, and be prepared to defend its use if and when your process is scrutinized. 

When working with people in group projects or creating media as a freelancer, be prepared to be upfront about your AI use. Many people have strong opinions about AI generation, and the one thing worse than losing customers because they learn you use AI is them finding out you used AI on their commission afterward. Demands for refunds, bad reviews and a bad reputation for dishonesty and a lack of transparency are problems no business wants.

Again, AI programs are useful for brainstorming and drafting. Many programs exist to help with editing work instead of creating it out of whole cloth, and we’ll cover them shortly. It falls to you, as the writer or artist, to refine what AI programs generate to make it your own.

As a final warning and appeal to common sense, with so many AI programs that are increasingly improving their learning faculties, do not use them for unethical purposes. Institutions and companies are becoming more vigilant, and many of them are actively investigating AI programs generating fraudulent research, articles or reviews. 

Science Direct, a site dedicated to peer-reviewed research, also warns about the pandemic of Essay Mills, AI sites and programs that exist primarily to generate essays for academic and professional purposes. This proliferation of bad-faith programs will only lead to more people distrusting AI programs, so if you are a proponent of AI, do not engage with these programs at all.

Tools That Support Ethical AI Use

So after this crash course, consider trying these AI programs that are designed to support human creativity and creation, as opposed to wholesale generation of media.

Brainstorming and Editing:

• Grammarly: A boon to any aspiring writer or student, Grammarly works not unlike the spelling & grammar check installed on most writing software. But this works as a more advanced AI program that actively offers suggestions to make your writing more dynamic.
• Jasper AI: As mentioned before, Jasper AI is a program designed to work with businesses to create marketing proof of concepts to help their business grow. 
• Notion AI: Billed as a workspace AI, Notion AI is designed to help offices organize in a variety of ways. It helps take meeting notes, creates schedules and organizes email inboxes, among other services.

Research and Citation Assistance:

• ChatGPT: ChatGPT can be asked directly to provide sources to any number of topics, but make sure to pair this with web browsing to verify the sources it provides.
• Perplexity: An AI research tool and web browser, Perplexity is designed to help people find sources to any research project one may have in mind. It is designed to ask follow up questions about its results, to further refine what you’re looking for.

Help Detect Plagiarism:

• Grammarly Premium: One of the services Grammarly offers with its subscription model is a tool to help detect plagiarism in any provided text.
• Turnitin: Already used by many schools across the country for online learning, Turnitin can detect any instances of plagiarism in any assignment submitted to the site.

One Eye On the Future

AI is not unlike Pandora’s Box. While it has unleashed many new and complex problems people have to deal with, there’s no closing the box again. And, if you know the myth properly, you know Pandora’s Box also had a true gift at the bottom: Hope. 

We can afford to be optimistic about AI programs. There are ways to use them as tools, and not merely a replacement for human endeavor and creativity. There are still many issues and conversations to be had on AI; we haven’t even touched the environmental impact AI generators create. But if there is one thing humans excel at, it is creating solutions to problems. Thankfully, we’re also quite adept at solving problems we created for ourselves.

There is no shame in trying out AI programs and seeing what this strange new technology can do. But do not let yourself get too comfortable with it. Don’t let it do all the work for you. Human creativity is how we succeed in any meaningful endeavor, and it’s how we can succeed with AI as well. 

William Fewox has worked as a freelance writer since 2017, and his work is featured in literary magazines such as The Aquarian, The Navigator and The Historian.