In a New Documentary, Artists Get Candid About AI

One artist recalled a client asking her to recreate an AI-generated reference image in her style. Another was told to “get over it” when she voiced hesitations about using generative technology. A motion graphic designer said he was certain he’d lose his job. An editorial cartoonist whose work is often political, based on his own upbringing in a dictatorship, observed that “AI has no history, it has no soul.” Still others said they embrace AI as a “tool.”

In a new short documentary from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), artists and creative workers get candid about generative technology, sharing their fears, ethical qualms, and real-life experiences. The 19-minute film, premiering exclusively on Hyperallergic, is based on the 2025 Pulse Survey on AI and Work, which collected responses from over 2,000 postsecondary arts and design graduates across more than 100 colleges and universities in the United States.

The survey found that while 90% of respondents expressed skepticism about AI-generated output, including environmental, copyright, and privacy concerns, about half said they are already using it professionally. “That's the complex reality of a field navigating a major disruption in real time,” said SNAAP Senior Research Fellow Joanna Woronkowicz.

Perhaps the survey's most illuminating findings concern the unequal adoption of AI, and who benefits from its widespread use.

As Woronkowicz and her team write in a related research article: “The key inequality question is therefore not only ‘who will AI replace?’ but also ‘who has the time, trust, training, and work conditions to make AI useful?’”

“How Creative Workers Are Impacted by AI“ (2026) was directed by Jan Oliver Lucks and produced by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), a nonprofit headquartered at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.