When creativity is reduced to typing a few words into a computer, we risk hollowing out art itself, trading depth and meaning for a stream of soulless, disposable content.

Chat, what should I have for dinner tonight? Can you give me an easy three-step routine for a productive morning? And explain this to me like I'm five years old, please, dear ChatGPT. Oh and while you're at it, don't forget to summarise this very important PDF file in a very digestible way. Yeah, I just don't feel like thinking too much today.

Everyone uses chatbots and generative AI nowadays, and I am no exception. Sometimes, I just cannot be bothered to think too much about a problem and turn to the easy solution. It is only human, after all – we seek simplicity for the sake of quick results. Then we brush our hands, congratulate ourselves, and move on.

This process is called cognitive offloading, and for many of us, it has become second nature. However, recent evidence suggests that our resilience on Chatty may erode our cognitive skills, and even the structure of our brains. A study from MIT's Media Lab backs this up: those who used ChatGPT the most showed the lowest brain engagement and "consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels."

In my own circle, I hear people using ChatGPT as a search engine instead of Google. Superficially, that might seem inconsequential, but I would argue the opposite. AI engines give you an immediate answer and, trusting in this all-powerful and seemingly omniscient god, you accept it as is...without checking sources, without actively deciding where you want to get information from. People argue that it's faster, that Google has too many results. But the fact remains: you've forgotten how to actively think for yourself because you've forgotten the value of inconvenience, and you are skipping the process of discernment for the fleeting comfort that only a burdenless task can provide.

Yes, it's inconvenient to spend hours learning how to draw or play music. Yes, it's inconvenient to sift through dozens of search results. But by doing so, you remain in charge. You make active choices. You resist blindly relying on a machine.

Cornell psychologists say the question isn't if AI will compromise human creativity and intelligence – because it already has.

From a scientific perspective, automating tasks deprives us of practice, stunting our ability to learn, and reinforcing our dependence on AI. The consequences are especially worrying for children. High-school teachers report students using AI to write essays and do their homework. But how can you learn if you only ever chase ease and the final product? The short answer is: you don't. You learn nothing, except that we live in a society obsessed with results, one that doesn't value the human experience of struggle, persistence, and growth.

Politically, the erosion of critical thinking is dangerous for society, especially as fake news and manipulative content are pushed at us by maliciously inclined politicians (I won't name names, but you can probably guess). Meanwhile, friends of mine use ChatGPT as a therapist, insisting it understands them better than a real person. While I see the cost-effectiveness of such approach, they forget that the machine is not capable of thought, empathy, or reason. It simply churns out the most statistically likely response – without meaning, without depth.

The impact on art, in my opinion, is even more troubling. People type in a prompt, and the machine generates an image. But artistry is about more than an end product. Art requires purpose, decision-making, and struggle. It is one of our most fundamental human needs. Art is not "content". It's not about producing something in the quickest, most efficient way so that strangers can scroll past it in seconds. Art is tedious, often taking weeks, months, or even years to refine. So-called AI artists who care only about the output miss the joy of experimenting, of failing, of discovering, of making something meaningful. With no emotions behind it, this kind of art cannot truly offer anything new or stir genuine feeling.

Have we really traded one of the most beautiful human experiences for a stream of soulless AI slop that adds nothing to the creative world? Remember the flood of Ghibli-style artwork that was trending just a few months ago, or the wave of companies using the "Starter pack" prompt to humanise their brand? And when the AI stops being fed because nobody creates anything anymore, it starts devouring itself, becoming it's very own Ouroboros.

In writing, the problem is just as obvious. I've lost count of how many AI-written pieces I've spotted (if I see the word vibrant one more time, I might scream.) Online stores and marketplaces are being flooded with AI-generated books, crowding out genuinely talented authors. Even while I was doing some research for this article, a Google search didn't highlight the problem. No, instead, it showed me guides on how to profit from AI publishing, while more and more universities are closing their Humanities and Creative Writing departments. We ought to be ashamed.

We are surrounded by the mundane, the trite, the generic; we are constantly bombarded by ads with no value beyond selling us something, by AI-generated images on Facebook created to either rage-bait or like-farm. AI art feels like the purest expression of a capitalistic society that has lost its sense of direction.

And let's not forget: AI makes mistakes. It gives wrong answers. But because we've grown used to outsourcing our thinking and creativity, we grant it an undeserved aura of infallibility. We've forgotten the intrinsic value of inconvenience, of doing the work ourselves.

I'll end on this, without diving deep into the ethics of AI art, its reliance on stolen data from real artists, its role in malicious content such as non-consensual pornography, or even the environmental costs of running these systems. In an ideal world, people would wake up to the problem, and more people would be talking about this. In an ideal world, art would be valued for the wonder that it is.

I am not against AI. I do see its value in simplifying mind-numbing tasks. But I am in favour of heavy regulation and limiting its generative power. The issue, of course, is that technology moves faster than lawmakers.