Aside from being a webdesigner I am also an author and a musician. All three were hobbies originally. I flirted with all three as real work.
On this site you can find out how the webdesign started.
I was always interested in writing and music. Music was often driven by an interest in technology, synthesizers and so forth. Later I discovered my computer could make music, there was no looking back. As for writing, I wrote a couple of novels while still at school. This was with pen and paper, then a typewriter, then a computer.
None of it came easy, computers were expensive. Eventually I self-published five books and did 39 music albums. I also did gigs both as a musician and a DJ. All three hobbies were gaining traction as paid work.
First of all I stopped DJing while in London when I attended university as a mature student. One was treated pretty bad as a DJ and I’d had enough. Making money from the music albums was near impossible. The books sold ok at the start but sales turned to nothing by 2026.
So many people write and self-publish, so many people make music. Quality is variable.
And so this article turns to AI.
Artificial Intelligence is bad news for creativity, well, it’s bad news full stop, but particularly bad for creative content.
There was already a huge slushpile online of books and music. AI is just making more of it. AI “scrapes” the content from websites, books, music and then turns it into a product instantly. I have been writing, making music and websites for many many years but AI can do the job straight away. What hope is there for human content? I unpublished my books and music as I do not want AI to scrape the content of my work. I’d rather it was available to no-one than to AI.
My last thing online is my webdesign. The clock it also ticking for that. You can get AI to make a website instantly. Is that a good idea? I have heard of Indian webdesigners making sites with AI and then having no idea how the site works and then it breaks and they can’t fix it.
Yes, you can have AI do anything, but should you?
Myself, I have never used it and I never will. Do you want to read a book written by a human or a machine? Same with music, same with a website. I know what I prefer.
Further note: after writing the above the “Biggles Forum” I look after was attacked by AI bots to the tune of several million hits in a few days. The host warned me to take down the site “or else”. I simply blocked all bot access, including AI bots. Clearly the bots wanted a lot of information on Biggles Books! The forum had ticked along for years with a regular bunch of the same people on there, not a high traffic website until AI decided to raid it.