Jessica Hische and the Great AI Backstabbing of 2026 🔪
I’ve been following Jessica Hische since 2011. When it comes to hand lettering and illustration, she literally, objectively holds the trophy for BEST in the world, in my opinion.
For her entire career she has been nothing but a champion of creative professionals (Go read her posts). Look at the things she has built and the conversations she has sparked. She has only EVER been someone who has GIVEN to the creative community.
What do I know
If you’re new here, the past six years I have sold over 14 Million dollars worth of creative services to some of the best tech companies on the planet. I have built a creative business that employs, hires, (and sometimes fires) creative professionals of all kinds. I have won awards, been featured in books, and have given my career to helping this industry, just like Jessica. Yet, the other day… I watched her own followers proverbially stab her right in the back, simply because they think she stabbed them in the back.
Yesterday she told her newsletter that she’s been helping Meta create some brand identity pieces for an AI assistant they're building. And designers. ERUPTED. INTO. FLAMES.
I came to her defense, and was immediately met with a slather of vehement replies that wreak of a severe case of "victim mindset" the likes of which I have never seen before.
SO WHO STABBED WHO!? Did Jessica sell out to the big corporate AI bros? Or did her audience jump to the wrong conclusion and put her on blast for no good reason?
I don’t think anyone stabbed anyone in the back. Instead, I think the creative community at large has been fed some lies about AI that, if we are not careful, will be the result of millions of creative careers dying on the vine. We should instead be learning from this situation and seeking out the truth about what’s happening across our industry.
Why so angry?
First of all, Jessica is not dumb. She sees the tension that AI is creating and she has been very vocal about the negative aspects of AI. Yet, her post touched a collective set of nerves that many are feeling and raised a question I want to try and answer here.
Why are 50% of creative so AGAINST any and all forms of AI?
3 Reasons Creative Professionals Hate AI
The Unethical Stuff. The unethical way these LLMS steal creative work they didn’t pay for to train their models (This is something I am AGAINST and believe should be stopped!)
The Fearful Stuff. The narrative that large corporations want to replace all creatives (I don’t actually believe this one) and the fear this causes.
The Insulting Stuff. The anger we feel watching the market, as a whole, embrace and value AI slop is real. AI has simply illuminated and amplified the horrible taste that clients have always had. It’s true…clients have always had bad taste, and AI has shined a spotlight on the truth that people who buy creative services actually value crappy work. This is insulting and I get it.
There are probably more reasons, but these are the main ones. However, I believe that we are in a moment as an industry where we must be seeking truth more than ever. If we don’t, I fear our downfall will not come from the hand of big corporations, but from inside the walls of our own creative industry… (Kinda like how the humans became each others worst enemies, NOT the zombies, in The Walking Dead.)
The Truths We Can’t Run From
The market determines what is valuable, not you & me.
Sadly, most creatives simply don’t understand how “market value” works. Remember when digital cameras appeared? This new technology caused a change in what the photo market valued almost overnight. Photography clients suddenly expected cheaper shoots and faster turnaround because they believed the tech replaced effort. When desktop publishing arrived, buyers demanded more design options for less money because they believed the computer was doing the real work.
The professionals knew better, but the market still moved.
That same shift is happening now with AI. Clients and those buying creative services do not stop to consider how much editing, judgment, or original thought is still required. They simply believe more is possible, and they are willing to pay for the people who help them achieve it.My agency used to charge $2500 for a blog post in b2b tech. The day chat GPT became available for public use one of our largest clients, paying us over 1M a year at the time, called to tell us we had to drop our rates for blogs. ALMOST INSTANTLY! AI’s ability to help people who can’t write…well…writer better had changed the perception of the market overnight and even though our writing team was learning to use these new AI tools, and the storytelling and human emotion still required a human writer to craft it, the market didn’t care. They wanted faster and cheaper almost as soon as it was an option.
This is because we don’t get to pick what those who buy our services actually value, they do. We do not get to decide what the market values…the market does. Our job as creatives is to understand this reality so we can thrive inside it instead of fighting against it.
The market will continue to assume that our work should move faster. They will assume the price should be lower. It does not matter if we know that is not always possible. Markets respond to perception long before they respond to accuracy, and if we ignore this, we will be left out of the opportunities sitting right in front of us.But this isn’t new to creatives. We have all lived through this before with digital cameras, laptops, and all kinds of technology advances and changes.
Jessica, herself, said in her post, “turns out a lot of the work that’s going around for us freelancers is for companies making AI products.”You must ask yourself, if the market is placing its value on AI, and that is where the work is both heading and coming from, do you want to be at the table where the work is being handed out, or standing outside and shaking your fist at it?
Do you want a career, or do you want to be mad? You have to choose.
No One Is Trying to Eradicate You (Even if big corporations are being shady)
It’s tough when you’ve been fed a narrative that all the big companies want to replace you and me. I get it. There are shady things being done with AI. I am 100% FOR standing out and coming up with policies and ways to protect the IP of creatives of all kinds that is being stolen and used without permission.
We have to be able to hold the truth that these companies do shady things in one hand, and in the other be able to say, “This could really be a new golden era for creatives!”
Both can be true. And taking work from these companies, or helping them, is one way that people like Jessica can put TRUE human creativity on display at the highest level.Would you rather Meta hire some AI bot to make a slop logo for them? No! They have chosen RIGHTLY. They have hired the best! This is how we win…this is how human creativity becomes the trojan horse that makes its way to the most influential brands in the world and reminds everyone that machines cannot replace us. I believe the creative directors at these brands are with us, and have no desire to replace you and me.
If you follow the data, the markets, and the hiring trends, this is actually the moment creatives have been waiting for, and I am going to choose to believe that and take advantage of it in ways that Save The Creatives, not destroy them.
Your Victim Mindset Is Keeping You Broke
The vehemently angry responses to Jessica are telling of something deeper going on in much of the creative industry, and this will be the hardest thing to fix and heal from. Many creatives being victims. Why help fix something, or be part of the solution when you can be mad? Spreading hope is hard. Spreading positivity and trying to be a servant to the industry would require real work. It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard, buy into a narrative, and NOT change. And this AI era is demanding the one thing that any and all creatives hate most (me included)... CHANGE!
HOW DARE YOU DEMAND I CHANGE!
A bitter heart will always respond in a posture of defense when change is demanded.
We have millions of creatives who are traumatized, broken, mad, angry, and the false narrative that AI is going to replace them has caused all of it to rise to the surface. It’s causing the response to be violent, mean, and vindictive, instead of empathetic…and honestly, that’s not us. That’s not who creatives are. That’s not how we are wired. I believe the media and the machines have poisoned many of us, and turned us against each other in the name of DEFENDING OUR RIGHT to exist as creatives. And look, I may be wrong. But I am also running a creative business myself.
We’re doing ok.
I have a team of designers and writers who have jobs.
I work my butt off.
Sometimes we use AI to get our work done.
Sometimes we don’t. I get it.
We all have a choice, and we can either choose to continue to be the victim, or we can choose to be the hero in the story who is doing something about what we’re angry at (like the creators of Shield Font Which is brilliant).
The Luddites: A Real Creative Industry That Got Replaced
In the early 1800s, tons of creatives in England worked as weavers. They made cloth by hand, using simple tools and a lot of skill. Their work was slow, but it was how they fed their families.
Then, new machines arrived in factories. These machines could weave cloth 100X faster and cheaper than most humans. Factory owners began using them to save money. As a result, many weavers lost their jobs or saw their pay cut drastically. An entire industry was scared, angry, and decided to take action.
One particular group of workers started to fight back. They called themselves The Luddites after a man named Ned Ludd, who was said to have smashed a weaving frame. (They actually went full Office Space!) The Luddites began to break into factories and destroy new machines. They believed that if the machines were gone, their old way of working would return.
Here’s the thing…the machines didn’t go away.
The government stopped the Luddite protests with force. In the end, the technology stayed. The workers still had to find new ways to live and work.
The Luddites were not totally anti-technology in general either; they protested specific machines (e.g., automated looms and stocking frames) that changed the value of skilled labor and allowed factory owners to produce more fabric with cheaper, less-skilled workers.
Seen through this lens, today’s anti-AI movement isn’t a step backward. It’s a modern continuation of a long tradition of skilled workers defending the value of human craft during moments of disruptive change.
And I’m here. I’m with the rest of the humans chanting! “DON’T REPLACE US!”
But the real tragedy with the Luddites is not that they were afraid. Fear in the face of new tools is a very normal and human response. And it’s not that they got replaced, even though that sucked.
The tragedy is that they fought the tools instead of learning how to shape the future those tools were creating.
They didn’t organize around new skills.
They didn’t learn to design, run, or own the machines. They knew the most about the fabrics, the weaving, and the creativity required to produce what they were best at.
And instead…they just…let themselves become victims.
They tried to smash the future instead of steering it.
And because of that, the Luddites lost both control and power.
Choose Your Mindset
An entire creative role was almost totally wiped out simply because they allowed their fear and anger to get the best of them instead of evolving with the moment.
We are facing an era of new, LIT👏ER👏ALLY👏 daily changes, and philosophical questions about humanity and creativity. I don’t have all the answers, and neither does Jessica. All I know is that this CAN be our moment if we choose it, and that I am going to choose to NOT be a victim.
I am not asking you to take sides, for or against AI. I am asking you to step into this season with all the feelings you have, feel them, and be real about where you’re at with it…and then to choose to have a lens of hope while we navigate it together.
To see people like Jessica as ambassadors for human creativity, not back-stabbing sellouts.
The victim mindset is what will give life to that little, whiny, toxic voice inside of you, and trust me…as a 39 year old man with four kids and a successful creative business who has been all over the world I can promise that you will never meet a thriving, successful, accomplished, hopeful victim.
This is how we Save The Creatives®.
For the love of humanity,
BT
