On the Use of AI Tools
The time is coming… and may already be here – when anytime someone claims they have not used AI in their creative work, they are either radicalized against it or afraid of admitting it to those who are.
We are living in a strange new era. Artificial intelligence is no longer just an idea in science fiction; it is a set of tools at our fingertips — tools that can help us think, write, design, and create. And like any tool, it can be misused, overused, or abused.
But it can also be used with intention, discernment, and even a kind of creativity in its own right.
So let me be honest:
Yes, I used AI in the making of this site.
But these are still my thoughts and convictions.
My prayers. My cries.
My questions about what it means to live as someone trying to find a way among the ruins.
AI did not tell me what I believe. It did not give me a vision for this work.
It didn’t put the ache in my heart or settle the Word in my mind.
AI did not wrestle through sleepless nights with the burden of what it means to be a Person in a dehumanizing world.
But it did help me organize, refine, and say more clearly what was already burning in me – what I believe God has been shaping in me for years.
The imagery you see throughout these pages is AI-assisted – but to merely call it “AI-generated” isn’t the full truth.
Each image took shape through hundreds of prompts and long hours of patient refinement. Trial and error, revision upon revision – not to produce something flashy, but to draw near to what I had seen in my mind’s eye.
These images were not conjured; they were crafted – shaped slowly, with intention and care.
And even now, none of them quite match what I imagined.
But then again, perhaps that’s always been true of art.
I’ve never been able to draw.
Words have always been my native terrain – even from the early grades, they were the one place I felt at home.
But I’ve always been drawn to the cover art of my favorite stories, especially in the realm of fantasy. Those images stirred something in me I could never fully name.
I never dreamed I’d be able to create them.
But now, with the help of AI tools, something astonishing has happened:
I can use the gift I do have – words – to shape the images I could never draw by hand.
It still feels like a kind of quiet miracle.
Each image is born not from brush or pencil, but from poetic direction – from prompts, refinements, and revisions that begin in language and become something visual.
It doesn’t replace the beauty of traditional art – it simply opens a door I thought was closed forever.
And I’m still amazed every time I walk through it.
The more important question to ask about AI is not “Did you use it?” but rather “How did you use it?”
Some approaches to AI are thoughtless and lazy – and the results show it. But others are thoughtful and deeply involved, more like a collaboration with a very strange but useful assistant than a replacement for genuine creativity.
For me, AI is not a substitute for human thought, feeling, or imagination. It is simply one of many tools in a long tradition of creative tools, like pen and ink, like a word processor, like a paintbrush or a printing press. It is no more moral or immoral than the hands that wield it.
So I offer you these waymarks with honesty:
I wrote them.
I used AI to help organize and refine parts of it.
I used AI to generate the cover art and shaped it myself with words.
But none of these tools supplied the heart, the burden, or the conviction behind this work.
That still came from the same place it always has:
a person, trying to speak to other persons, about the One who made us someone.
Thank you for reading – and for seeing me as a someone too.
Every hard journey is eased by good companions, and your steps alongside mine are a gift to me.
Should you wish, you may contribute some coin to the Pilgrim’s Purse.
