Let’s be real. The world is… a lot right now. And in the middle of all that gestures vaguely at everything, the robots have arrived. Specifically, AI image generators. It’s weird, it’s complicated, and if you’re feeling a little skeptical about it all, trust us, you’re not alone.
So, we wanted to pull back the curtain and have an honest chat about something new here at Cranky Critters HQ. We’ve started using AI as a tool to help create the art for our critters.
Yep. A robot is helping us draw our feelings.
Before you picture a soulless machine churning out sad-looking potatoes (though, honestly, a sad potato is a vibe), let us explain the why, the how, and how we’re making sure the heart of Cranky Critters stays firmly human.
Why We’re Using AI (AKA, The Spoon-Saving Strategy)
If you’re part of this community, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “spoons.” You know, that finite amount of energy you get each day to deal with… well, life. As a small business powered by neurospicy, chronically-ill humanity, our spoon drawer is often running low.
The ideas for new critters—for ways to make you feel seen—are endless. Our brains are a constant browser-with-100-tabs situation. But the physical and mental energy to hand-draw every single one from scratch, run the business, pack the orders, and answer emails? That’s where the energy drains.
Using AI is like having a really, really fast intern. It helps us:
- Bring Critters to Life, Faster: We can now take an idea—like, “What does Depersonalization feel like as an Axolotl?”—and visualize it quickly. This lets us refine the concept until it perfectly captures that specific, hard-to-describe feeling.
- Keep the Style Consistent: It ensures that Worrybun the Rabbit and Professor Hootington the Owl look like they belong to the same grumpy, lovable family. This consistency is key to our brand.
- Focus on the Fun Stuff: It frees up our very limited spoons to focus on what matters most: connecting with you, packing your orders with care, and dreaming up the next validating slogan.
Ultimately, it helps us create more art for more people without hitting a complete burnout wall. (A wall we know many of you are intimately familiar with).
But What About the… Ick? (Navigating the Ethics Mindfully)
We get it. The conversation around AI art is loaded with valid concerns. So let’s have a frank chat about it, because “truly ethical” in this new space can feel like a bit of a unicorn. Ugh. It’s complicated.
Our approach is to navigate this imperfect landscape by making the most responsible choices currently available to us. For us, that means:
- Choosing Our Tools Carefully: We are opting for services that are at least trying to build a more responsible framework, prioritizing those built on licensed and public domain data instead of indiscriminate scraping. We believe in supporting the platforms moving towards compensation models for artists.
- Reducing Our Energy Footprint: We’re mindful that these big AI brains use a lot of power. While we can’t control the data centers, we can control our own process. We’ve spent a lot of time developing and refining a specific prompting ‘language’ for our critters. This means we get the image we need with very little need for endless re-tries, cutting down on our little slice of the energy pie. It’s a small thing, but we believe conscious choices add up.
- A Human Is Always the Director: Most importantly, the AI is a tool, not the creator. The soul of every single Cranky Critter comes from a human brain. The prompt that describes how an anxious rabbit holds its tiny, trembling paws—that comes from a human who gets it. The AI is a translation tool, not the author.
It’s also genuinely exciting to see this technology evolve. Smaller, more efficient AI models are emerging that are capable of running locally on a home computer (a powerful gaming rig, for instance). This points to a future where creativity might become less reliant on huge, centralized systems.
The goal of Cranky Critters has always been to use cute, accessible art to destigmatize the hard stuff. This is just a new tool that helps us do more of that. The heart, the humor, and the crankiness remain completely, unapologetically human.