Rob Biddulph says AI art is 'soulless' and human creativity must be defended

“I think they’re really depressing, to be honest,” he told TechRadar. He said illustration is an expression of an individual personality, and that human beings cannot help putting some of themselves into a drawing or design. Viewers can often recognize the person who made a piece of artwork through their quirks, imperfections, sense of humor and the decisions they made along the way, he said. He also called it ironic to use AI to advertise a local event, asking whether the point of such an event is not that it is about people and community.

Biddulph said AI is doing more than filling the high street with generic artwork. It is taking paid work away from human designers and illustrators, he said, while the AI systems themselves have been trained on human artists’ work without compensation. “The thing to always remember is that these AI systems haven't appeared out of thin air,” he told TechRadar. “They've been trained on enormous quantities of existing creative work produced by artists, illustrators, photographers and writers who were never asked for permission for their work to be used and haven't been paid for it.” He added that those systems are now producing work that competes directly with the people whose work helped train them.

He also challenged assumptions about the creative industries. Biddulph said there is a tendency to talk about them as if they are made up entirely of wealthy, successful people, when in fact they include thousands of freelancers, small studios, illustrators, photographers, designers and writers, many working in precarious circumstances. For an established artist, he said, the impact might be a reduction in commissions, but for someone just starting out it could mean that opportunities to build a career are not there in the first place.

Asked whether AI companies had effectively won the debate over using artists’ work to train models, Biddulph said he did not think they had won, although he understood why it sometimes feels that way. He said the technology has moved quickly and the companies behind it have enormous financial resources, making it feel as though the horse has bolted and everyone else is playing catch-up. But he said the argument has not gone away and that it may be entering an important phase.

In the UK, he said, there was a huge amount of opposition from the creative industries to the government’s original proposal, which would effectively have allowed AI companies to train on copyrighted work unless individual creators specifically opted out. The problem, he said, was that it placed the responsibility on millions of individual creators to protect their own work rather than requiring companies to seek permission first. The government subsequently stepped back. Biddulph said it was important to recognize that artists, writers, publishers and other creative organizations had made their voices heard and had an impact.

Biddulph said he favors an opt-in system. “My own feeling is that the principle should be fairly straightforward: if you want to use somebody else's creative work to build a commercial product, you should have to ask permission and pay for it,” he told TechRadar. He said he did not see why artists and illustrators should be expected to accept a different set of rules simply because the technology is new, and that he would like to see a proper opt-in licensing system rather than an opt-out system.

Editor's Summary

Rob Biddulph, the children’s author and illustrator named Illustrator of the Year 2025, told TechRadar that AI-generated art is soulless, displaces human creative work and was trained on artists’ work without permission or payment. He supports an opt-in licensing system in the UK, arguing creators should be asked for permission and paid when their work is used to build commercial AI products. The interview also highlights the precarious position of freelancers and small creative businesses as AI tools spread.