Let’s all agree on one thing. AI has been revolutionary.
Before AI, I paid freelancers and private contractors to help me with work. In 2018, for example, I paid a consultant AUD 1,500 to conduct and write up a piece of research for me. I never even used it.
That has changed. AI has made it easy to research a business idea. But it has also killed creativity and put a lot of businesses at risk. These are things regulators must address, globally and urgently. Legislation has to catch up with how fast AI is growing and how widely it is being used.
The bots at my door
What some unscrupulous people now do is send bots to scrape other people’s ideas. The biggest attacks on my sites go after two paths, looking for secret keys and source code:
- /.env — the environment file, where secret keys live.
- /.git/config — the repository, where the source code lives.
Many of these are automated bots.
Railway, which I used for one of my projects, was recently hacked. Good thing I had already stopped using it.
Clone anything
Recently I watched Kenyan TikToker David Partner (New Account) talk about reverse engineering anything using AI. He was talking about the recent cloning of Adobe, and the fact that you can now use rea.tools to clone anything.
A lot of people liked that video, and went searching for “Marluto rea app.”
While you are busy working your ass off and building, someone is sitting behind a computer trying to steal your source code. It happened to me with visanationals.com, the project I used to call embassyready.com.
AI does not think for me
I use AI, but I never allow it to think for me. I read each and every thing I generate with AI and make changes accordingly. That is why I rely on academic sources. Two recent examples.
I asked AI about the origin of manifestation. Advanced AI models came back telling me the idea originated in Greece.
Knowing history, I rejected that position. My thesis, which can be substantiated, is that the philosophical and foundational doctrine of modern manifestation started in the temples of Kemet before it spread to the rest of the world.
Read on The Midnight Alchemist — The History of Manifestation: From Kemet to Today and What Was There Before Alexandria?
I asked both Codex (Astra) and Claude Code (Fable 5.1) about Abdullah, the man who taught Neville Goddard about manifestation. Both said his origins were unknown and doubtful.
I knew that was not the whole truth, so I set out to investigate, and found that Abdullah actually lived in Harlem. More on that in a Midnight Alchemist article coming soon.
So I use AI to research an idea I have already thought about, and to get more stats and data before I start building. But I do not let it skew my judgement and experience.
An app is not a brand
Is scraping a business idea or an app enough? I don’t think so. Building an app is just a small part of the bigger work. The biggest challenge is building a community that pays for it, and a community comes from several years of marketing and branding.
You could make Adidas shoes — probably even better ones. But you cannot recreate Adidas the brand and its following.
Creating an Adidas shoe, and marketing and selling it, are two different things. Adidas will always beat you at their own game.
My call
To builders. Use your brain to think and create. Copying other people’s work and trying to ride on their back is unprofessional, and it doesn’t build anything that lasts.
To legislators, especially in Australia and other parts of the world. It is high time you strengthened legislation so that such people can be sued.
AI should not kill creativity, or lead to the abuse of other people’s intellectual property.
So, has AI killed creativity?
Back to the question I started with. I don’t think so. But the direction the world is heading is obvious — a copycat system that will soon collapse.
Learn to Be Creative. Do Not Copy. — how I find and test an idea instead of copying one.
The Midnight Alchemist. Where It Stands. — what came out of one of these ideas.
AI Shadow Work: A Mirror, Not a Flatterer — on The Midnight Alchemist.