My Personal Lens
I’ve spent decades championing guinea pig welfare on many fronts -- from inventing and advocating for properly-sized C&C cages, to creating safe and inspiring online communities, to becoming a long-time, hands-on rescuer who’s personally rehomed over a thousand guinea pigs. I also fund and run Guinea Pig Finder, a long-time free resource helping others responsibly rehome their pet guinea pigs, as well as manage several of the premier websites dedicated to guinea pig cages, care, and supplies.
For nearly thirty years, this mission -- online and locally -- has demanded visual representations of guinea pigs that are accurate, inspiring, and educational. To that end, I’ve been a relentless collector and commissioner of guinea pig art. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on stock photo sites and private commissions.
Whether I’ve paid artists directly or through royalties, I’ve likely spent more on guinea pig artwork than anyone else I can think of. My cavy journey dates back to 1998, just after the dawn of the modern Internet (yes, AOL dial-up tones still echoed through some homes). Along the way, I’ve explored the fascinating world of guinea pig art, which I share more about in The History of Guinea Pig Art.
I’ve never stopped combing through image stock libraries for fresh, creative takes. A few contemporary artists have been wonderfully prolific in recent years, but overall there’s always been a scarcity of guinea pig art compared to almost any other animal.
I began experimenting with DALL·E 2 soon after its launch in 2022. My early guinea-pig prompt results were… let’s just say “interesting.” And it wasn’t cheap—back then, using AI art tools came with real financial commitment. Within a few months, I’d spent over $2,500 exploring what this new technology could do. When DALL·E 3 arrived in fall 2023, I was ready. My deeper dives into art styles and prompt craft meant I could finally coax the kind of quality and emotional resonance I’d been envisioning for years.
At the heart of it all was the same motivation that has driven me from the start: a love of beauty and the joy of sharing it -- especially with those who love guinea pigs as much as I do.
Who’s Copying Whom?
When the muse circles back, who’s copying whom? For years, I’ve watched my creations ripple outward across the guinea-pig world -- often without credit, usually without awareness. And this wasn’t one painting or ten illustrations that took hours, days or weeks to complete that someone riffed on. Entire lines of products, images, graphics, and copy have been lifted and monetized countless times -- adding up to what I can conservatively estimate as tens of millions of dollars in benefit to others. Imagine that. That 'stolen' work took months and years of blood, sweat, and tears to create and popularize. Sometimes it was flattering, generally frustrating, and occasionally infuriating. I learned early that once you put something online, it takes on a life of its own.
That’s part of why the new debate around “AI stealing art” feels so layered to me. I understand the instinct to protect what you’ve made -- deeply. But I also understand how inspiration moves, morphs, and circles back. I’ve lived it.
The truth is, much of the guinea-pig imagery now surfacing in AI models likely traces back to works that, in part at least, were themselves inspired by my guinea pig photography, cages, or product imagery -- designs I released decades ago. When AI systems pull from that collective visual history, they’re not pulling from a single act of “theft” so much as from a cultural feedback loop that’s been building for years.
A quick example. I generated an image with DALL·E 2 in 2022 and instantly recognized the composition -- it echoed a DIY ramp photo posted on my Guinea Pig Cages forum back in 2007 by a member named Envisionary333. That’s how ecosystems work: we inspire each other, then the machine learns from the pool we’ve all contributed to.
To show how that creative feedback loop plays out, here’s one example.
AI Slop (and why it happens)
Re-running that old 2022 prompt today (“long-haired guinea pig waddling up a ramp in the style of Pixar in ink and watercolor painting, detailed, digital art”) now yields what I’d call AI slop -- over-processed, generic, and oddly personality-free. UGH.
Here’s the thing: models evolve and prompt dialects change. What worked in DALL·E 2 often breaks in DALL·E 3 or ChatGPT’s image tool because:
-
style tokens get throttled or re-weighted,
-
safety/brand filters clamp down on certain style calls (e.g., “in the style of…”),
-
newer models favor photoreal clarity over quirky abstraction.
I do miss a touch of DALL·E 2’s wild, “exotic” creativity. But DALL·E 3 delivered an exponential jump in anatomy, fidelity, and usable quality -- a tradeoff I’ll take for most purposes.
So no, not every output today is magic -- far from it. But the larger story isn’t whether an image nails it on the first try. It’s that the visual language I helped seed -- through forums, products, and commissions -- now flows through modern models. Which leads to the question that really matters:
If the art that inspires the machine was itself, in part, inspired by you, where does authorship begin and end?
This is where nuance gets lost. It’s easy to point fingers at “AI art” as derivative, but much harder to reckon with how all creativity functions in layers of influence. Painters, photographers, digital artists -- none of us create in isolation. We absorb, remix, reinterpret. The machine just does it faster, at scale, and without asking for credit.
So when I generate guinea-pig art with AI, I don’t see imitation -- I see continuation. I’m reclaiming the visual language I helped build and steering it under my own direction again.
The Cost of Creation: A Responsibility
As much as the authorship debate matters, there’s another conversation we’re not having nearly enough -- the cost of creation.
Every medium has a footprint. Traditional art uses physical materials -- paint, canvas, paper, chemicals, water. Photography demands lighting, equipment, and endless digital storage. Even the massive stock photo libraries I used for years have hidden costs: energy-hungry servers, global distribution networks, and the overproduction of visual clutter to feed the internet’s appetite.
AI art sits in a strange in-between. On one hand, it relies on data centers and compute -- undeniably energy-intensive. On the other, it can reduce manufacturing, printing, shipping, and the waste of constant physical production. It lets creators explore, refine, and generate inspiration without burning through supplies.
I think about this in the context of guinea pigs -- animals who remind us to tread lightly and care for fragile systems. My creative mission carries that ethos: less waste, more meaning. Used thoughtfully, AI can align with that.
But it comes down to intent. AI can help us create more responsibly -- if we use it responsibly. That means being honest about process, crediting inspiration where possible, and recognizing that every click, prompt, and render has an environmental cost.
So the real question for me isn’t “Is AI art good or bad?” It’s what we do with the tools we have -- how we balance speed with stewardship, and novelty with integrity. Whether we’re talking about cages, communities, or creativity, progress is not just innovation. It’s care.
Co-Creating: The New Art of Authorship
The tools have changed, but the heart of creation hasn’t. Whether I’m building a cage, writing an article, or generating an image from a prompt, the spark still begins in the same place -- intention.
AI doesn’t replace that spark. It magnifies it. It gives me the ability to experiment, refine, and visualize faster than ever before, but it still needs direction, judgment, and soul. Those parts are human. They always will be.
The difference now is that creativity feels more like a conversation -- not just between artist and audience, but between human and machine. The AI takes what I know, what I’ve built, what I’ve loved, and hands back possibilities. I decide what’s worth keeping. I give it context, emotion, and story.
For me, that’s the future of authorship -- a partnership. It’s not about who holds the pen or the pixel brush; it’s about what we do with the tools in our hands, and whether the result adds something beautiful or meaningful to the world.
So as we stand at this new frontier of art and authorship, I don’t see machines stealing from us. I see them mirroring us -- reflecting the worlds we’ve already made and offering new ways to see them again.
Because in the end, the tools will keep changing — but the care, the curiosity, and the heart behind creation are still ours to carry forward.
