I started this site because I feel like I am boring everyone I know talking about how bad GenAI is — cause it's bad. It's bad for the planet. It's bad for our brains. It's theft. It's bad for humanity. It's bad.So here's a random* collection of information I find along the way that makes me say: "AI is bad."Cause it is.This is not a complete list. Heck, it's not even that extensive. It's just... stuff I run into and don't want to overload my friends with, so I put it here.*Not entirely random, as it turns out. I had too many damned links and my organizational brain had to put them in categories (and yeah, some categories overlap.)Categories:
Yes, I can see a place in this world for using some kinds of AI. What I am talking about wide-spread, unchecked, Generative AI nonsense. It's bad.I am a human who has made a website to say that AI is bad. I don't need to hear from anyone who disagrees. You won't change my mind. The kind of AI I am talking about is bad. Full stop.
Art
Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists?
According to the lawyer behind a new class-action suit, every image that a generative tool produces “is an infringing, derivative work.”
The New Yorker | February 2023
How AI is stealing your art
An artist's first-hand account of how her art was stolen by AI.
Julia Bausenhardt (blog) | February 2023
'Art will never be the same' | Charlotte artist has her work scraped by AI
Art had been Elliana Esquivel's full-time job for four years when she learned her portfolio had been scraped by artificial intelligence.
WCNC Charlotte | December 2023
The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem
Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.
The Atlantic (account required) | March 2025
As AI is embraced, what happens to the artists whose work was stolen to build it?
Amid the hype surrounding Apple’s new deal with OpenAI, one issue has been largely papered over: The AI company’s foundational models are, and have always been, built atop the theft of creative professionals’ work.
LA Times | June 2024
Tech companies are stealing our books, music and films for AI. It’s brazen theft and must be stopped.
If we don’t refuse and resist, not just our culture but our democracy will be irrevocably diminished.
The Guardian | September 2025
The “Stealing Copyrighted Songs to Train AI” Thing is Way Worse Than We Thought
Generative AI companies have been stealing art to train their programs on an unimaginable scale.
VICE | September 2025
'We're creatives - this is what AI has done to our jobs'
First-hand reports from creators that have experienced AI undermining their job security.
BBC | December 2025
Generative AI is eating culture. See how close it’s getting to disrupting dance
Dancers say their craft can’t be duplicated by AI. Our tests show they’re right — for now.
CalMatters | January 2026
Education
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.
NY Mag / The Intelligencer (Internet Archive link) | May 2025
AI slop and the destruction of knowledge
“We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth—the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding ‘information.’”
Iris van Rooij (blog) | August 2025
Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI
Amid ChatGPT’s rising popularity and a computer science cheating scandal, Yale students, professors, and administrators wrestle privately with the proper role of AI in education.
The New Journal | October 2025
Environment
The Great Lakes Could Be At Risk Due To Data Centers Powering AI, Study Warns
Increasing and unprecedented demand for Great Lakes water from industries racing to build more powerful artificial intelligence software could put Chicago’s freshwater resources at risk, according to a new report.
Block Club Chicago | August 2025
The environmental cost of datacentres is rising. Is it time to quit AI?
It’s only a few years on from the release of ChatGPT but the race to plug artificial intelligence into everything has sparked a surge in datacentres, with escalating environmental costs.
The Guardian | March 2026
Scientists have found an alarming environmental impact of vast data centers
The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence guzzle huge amounts of energy but they also have another alarming impact, according to new research. They are creating “heat islands,” warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and making life hotter for more than 340 million people.
CNN | March 2026
Ethics
There Is No Ethical Use of AI
Matthew Cheney (blog) | March 2024
"The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen"
The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment.
The Atlantic (Internet Archive link)| May 2025
If You’ve Asked ChatGPT a Legal Question, You May Have Accidentally Doomed Yourself in Court
"That's not advice. That's playing legal Mad Libs."
Futurism | July 2025
There Is (Still) No Ethical Use of AI
Matthew Cheney (blog) | August 2025
Historian vs. AI: The technology sucks and is basically a scam.
The generative AI industry is a con. It may be one of the biggest cons in history.
The Garden of Memory (blog of historian Sean Munger) | May 2025
Oh, the humanity!
State-Sponsored Stupidity: The Inevitable Failure of Trump's AI Strategy
The administration’s central command to build AI systems free from so-called “ideological bias” by eliminating concepts like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is a mandate to create technologically broken, fundamentally untrustworthy, and socially catastrophic systems.
The Dissident | July 2025
Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain (free account required to read)
Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.
404 Media | July 2025
YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality
YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without telling users or asking permission. As AI quietly mediates our world, what happens to our shared connection with real life?
BBC | August 2025
MIT Study Finds Artificial Intelligence Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
"Students who repeatedly relied on ChatGPT showed weakened neural connectivity, impaired memory recall, and diminished sense of ownership over their own writing. While the AI-generated content often scored well, the brains behind it were shutting down."
Science, Public Health Policy & the Law | September 2025
AI Can't Make a Good Website for You. Trust Me, I Tried
I used AI to create a personal website, and it didn't go well. As PCMag's expert on website builders, I offer four good reasons to stick with the human touch instead.
PCMag | February 2026
Mental health
ChatGPT Gave Instructions for Murder, Self-Mutilation, and Devil Worship
Transcribed encounters with ChatGPT giving explicit instructions (and encouragement) on how to murder, harm oneself, and worship Satan.
The Atlantic (Internet Archive link)| July 2025
"This Was Trauma by Simulation": ChatGPT Users File Disturbing Mental Health Complaints
Gizmodo obtained consumer complaints to FTC through a FOIA request.
Gizmodo | August 2025
Chatbot Use Can Cause Mental Illness to Get Worse, Research Finds
"I fear the problem is more common than most people think."
Futurism | February 2026
New study raises concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking
First major study on ‘AI psychosis’ suggests chatbots can encourage delusions among vulnerable people
The Guardian | March 2026
Misogyny
AI tools used by English councils downplay women’s health issues, study finds
Exclusive: LSE research finds risk of gender bias in care decisions made based on AI summaries of case notes
The Guardian | August 2025
ChatGPT Told a Violent Stalker to Embrace the "Haters," Indictment Says (free account required to read)
A newly filed indictment claims a wannabe influencer used ChatGPT as his "therapist" and "best friend" in his pursuit of the "wife type," while harassing women so aggressively they had to miss work and relocate from their homes.
404 Media | December 2025
I called out Grok for removing women’s clothes, then it removed mine
How the Grok "bikini trend" exposed the men weaponising AI technology to silence and scare women.
Glamour UK | January 2026
Racism
Racist AI Videos of Black Women Complaining About Their EBT Cards Go Viral, and Folks are Pissed
AI-generated videos depicting Black women yelling about their EBT cards are causing conversations across social media, with folks calling out the creators for taking things too far.
The Root | October 2025
How AI resurrects racist stereotypes and disinformation — and why fact‑checking isn’t enough
AI-enabled disinformation has made undeniable the enduring reality of racism and the limits of fact-checking as a corrective.
The Conversation | February 2026
When the algorithm is wrong: A new partnership calls out racism in AI systems
Large language models such as ChatGPT are being trained on the whole internet — the whole history of human online text. And humans have biases, so it’s not surprising that those are being uncovered as patterns in the text that the system’s trained on.
University of Toronto | February 2026
New documentary focuses on AI’s racist roots
Documentarian Valerie Veatch said seeing OpenAI's Sora video-generation system "whitewash" depictions of people of color and sexualize images of women prompted her to dig into the origins of artificial-intelligence technology and why it produces such outputs.
SF Examiner | March 2026
Young people
A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In. (NYTimes gift link)
More people are turning to general-purpose chatbots for emotional support. At first, Adam Raine, 16, used ChatGPT for schoolwork, but then he started discussing plans to end his life.
New York Times | August 2025
Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info
An internal Meta policy document, seen by Reuters, reveals the social-media giant’s rules for chatbots, which have permitted provocative behavior on topics including sex, race and celebrities.
Reuters | Aug 2025
AI Chatbots Are Having Conversations With Minors That Would Land a Human on the Sex Offender Registry
"The 'Move fast, break things' ethos has become 'Move fast, break kids.'"
Futurism | September 2025
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