u/No-Rice6919

I was asking for writing advice on stack exchange and I shared my obsessions and compulsions on writing, especially avoiding AI and deleting stuff in fear that AI influenced it, and someone decided to insult me by saying I was playing the “poor me” game, and that it was a “self-imposed prison” and that I was just blaming my OCD, and that made me cry because I almost lost my life to OCD before, and I’m heavily medicated for it now and I was trying to be nice, I said thanks, but then that person, who isn’t even a troll or anything, they were literally the rated #1 user on writing stack exchange with the best reputation, simply insulted me because of it. I was diagnosed with extreme OCD, I had to go to the psyche ward and mental hospital. I have no friends, no job, I couldn’t even graduate high school, and now my OCD’s targeting one of my only hobbies and I get insulted for it.

I wish people were nicer. I already hate myself for these obsessions on hurting people but now even my harmless obsessions get hate. Why do I only receive kindness if people feel like it or do research? I didn’t choose to have any of these obsessions yet I’m treated like I’m stupid and annoying for insisting these things.

I’ve seen trending posts about how using AI as inspiration still counts as using AI, even if you don’t generate it, and I’m wondering how far that extends?
Right now, I have disorderly obsessions about avoiding using AI in any means. I have genuine anxiety attacks from the sight of AI on my screen and I desperately try to escape it. (I’m diagnosed with extreme/severe OCD)

I used to use AI to share my ideas, which I now obsessively avoid. Now I have genuine anxiety attacks from the sight of AI on my screen and I desperately try to escape it. (I’m diagnosed with extreme/severe OCD)

But can AI taint ideas? For example, I created my own cipher of english with my own artistic expression of what I decide the letters will look like, but I’m afraid I might’ve seen that idea by AI.

How about the idea of my favorite animals being godlike idols being tainted by AI influence? The idea of them all being a specific color, or have a certain shape for their eyes, and a letter for their third eye etc.

I don’t remember seeing something AI generated and me deciding “I’m gonna copy that,” but can AI infect ideas and make them immoral to use?

I try to visualize my OCs based on human-made characters, particularly ones with 3 eyes, based on animals, the color palette I was looking at, but I’m afraid the mere notion that it might’ve stemmed from AI inspiration still makes it deeply rooted in AI inspiration, which makes it bad according to popular opinions in this subreddit.

I really wish I could make art that is 100% AI free, but it feels like anything short of just copying things IRL would be influenced by AI simply because I used to use it in the past. I don’t want to just be a copying machine; that’s all I was for most of my life as an artist. All I did was draw people and animals, and now that I actually want to make things unique to myself, I find out the mere notion of being inspired by anything AI generated is still immoral.

It’s extremely hard to get anything done because my obsession successfully planted the idea that having any sexual thought, feeling, or “reaction” while doing anything might mean I have bad intent. Example, I draw animals, however every time I draw literally any part of the animal, my brain generates a possible sexual intrusive thought that ties to it, and I get into this ridiculous loop of undoing certain lines for dozens of times, maybe (likely) even hundreds. I cancel and order the same thing multiple times because I get scared that the first time I ordered it with “intent” to hurt an animal or person sexually, so I cancel it and try to order it with clean intent. Is this reasonable? Does anyone know how actual intent works?

I used to draw, a lot. Usually to pass the time when I went to OCD therapy. I drew my favorite animals, video game characters and stuff. I would spend hours or multiple days on these drawings, but now, I’m scared to make literally anything. All these anti-ai arguments about how using AI as reference or inspiration and how it makes the art itself less genuine or creative started this very intense obsession (OCD related) that if my art is even slightly inspired by AI in any way, it will be ingenuine and worthless. This also extends to using search engines that happened to be powered by LLMs like gemini to search for information that I might use, like anatomy, or the very simple fact of my subconscious using something generated by AI in the past. Human imagination is rooted in our experiences and what we see, and I see so much AI nonsense that I keep constantly trying to flush out of my brain because I’m scared it’ll contaminate my creativity process and go into my drawings. I wish I could scratch it all out but it’s impossible. I feel like every thought and idea is dangerous and tainted by AI. I’m scared that I’ll spend years working on things and none of it will mean anything because it’ll all be rooted in some worthless AI prompt creative-wise. It’s already been months, I’ve been trying to start literally anything, but I can’t. I draw for my entire day, but at the end I just delete it all. I don’t save backups because I think it’s worthless. I lost this hobby. Most of my life I’ve doodled as a way to pass the time, but I literally feel like I’m not allowed to anymore.

I’m not trying to ragebait or do anything annoying seriously, I am officially diagnosed with a mental disorder (extreme OCD) and I’ve been driving myself insane drying to avoid anything that’s AI during my works of art or writing. I understand that using generative AI to generate a story and just pasting it onto a page or using an image generator is obviously a mockery of art, but at what point is it not wrong? Sometimes I use AI to find sources of information, like animal facts or websites relevant to the kind of thing I’m drawing, but I get scared that counts as using AI for art.

Please, I’ve been constantly starting over and I literally can’t start and it’s been months. Every-time I write or draw anything, I get an intrusive fear that something was borrowed from AI and I delete it all. AI is everywhere, in search engines, in algorithms, everything is tainted. My own mind isn’t safe. I shut off all my electronics and just focus yet even then there’s the fear that my mind subconsciously borrowed a trope, idea, or visualization from something that was AI generated.

Please, tell me what is okay!!