B&D Newsletter

AI & the Art World: Where We Stand

 

We’ve seen the criticism, and we get it.

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As creatives ourselves, we understand the concern that new technologies, especially ones involving AI, can feel threatening to the people who’ve spent years perfecting their craft. There’s fear that what was once valued as art might now be dismissed as automation.

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But here’s the truth about how we work:

We don’t just generate art and throw it into books. Every single page goes through our hands, edited, cleaned up, digitally enhanced, drawn on, expanded, reshaped. AI is only the starting canvas. We build from it, not around it.

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What we’re doing isn’t about replacing artists. It’s about surviving, adapting, and creating with the tools available to us. Around the time we were earning $30 after a full day delivering Uber Eats, David had been experimenting with AI-generated images and bouncing side hustle ideas around with Brittney on the regular. Then Brittney said something that brought it all into focus: “What if we sell coloring pages?” That moment clicked with everything David had been observing on YouTube from Amazon publishing creators. Her insight gave shape to the spark, and together, we turned that connection into action.

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Some say AI is ruining creative jobs. But creativity has always evolved. When cars replaced the horse and buggy, people didn’t stop riding horses, they just stopped needing them as transportation. Entirely new industries were born. When color film emerged, it didn’t erase black-and-white cinema, it just gave storytellers a broader canvas. When 3D animation grew, it didn’t kill 2D, it added to the possibilities of visual storytelling.

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Now, we’re seeing it again: AI as the new tool. Like driverless cars entering the roads once filled with stick-shift sedans, it's not about erasing the past, it's about building new lanes for the future. Some will still hand-draw. Others, like us, will use AI-assisted workflows to express ourselves. Both can and should exist.

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We’re not tech giants looking to disrupt industries. We’re just two people creating books from scratch, learning as we go, and investing real work into every product you see. We respect the traditional illustrators. We admire them. But we also believe there’s space for creators like us, people using AI not to bypass creativity, but to ignite it.

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Technology shifts. Tools change.

But the drive to create and the heart behind it remains.