Let me say the quiet part out loud: I use artificial intelligence in my business every single day. I use it to build lead magnets, draft strategies, write first-pass copy, research industries, and create resources for my clients that would have taken me three times as long to produce without it. And I’m not embarrassed about that. I’m proud of it.

Because here’s what I know after 15+ years in marketing, photography, and web design: the professionals who survive industry shifts are never the ones who dig in their heels and refuse to change. They’re the ones who figure out how to use the new tools better than everyone else.

We’ve been here before. And the lesson is always the same.

Photographers
Lived This Already

When photography went from film to digital, there was an entire generation of photographers who were convinced it was the end. The craft would be cheapened. Anyone with a point-and-shoot would call themselves a photographer. The industry would collapse.

It didn’t collapse. It transformed. The photographers who adapted — who learned digital editing, who understood that the camera was now just a more accessible tool and that real value lived in the eye behind it, the storytelling, the strategy — those photographers didn’t just survive. They thrived.

I started shooting 15 years ago. I watched that shift happen. And I’m watching the exact same thing happen in marketing and web design right now.

Is AI Going to Kill Web Design?
No. Here’s Why.

This is the question I keep getting asked, so let’s address it directly.

Yes, AI can generate a website. Yes, there are tools that will spit out a functional page in twenty minutes. And yes, someone with enough time, patience, and technical curiosity can probably build something passable without hiring a designer.

But here’s what AI cannot do: it cannot sit across from a business owner and understand what they actually need. It cannot ask the right questions. It cannot translate a vague gut feeling about a brand into a conversion-focused strategy. It cannot look at your target customer and know what’s going to make them trust you enough to buy.

And more importantly — most small business owners are not going to figure out how to use AI to build their own website. Not because they’re not smart. Because they’re busy. Because they have a business to run. Because AI is still tech, and tech still has a learning curve, and the learning curve still costs time that most entrepreneurs don’t have.

What AI does is raise the floor. It makes basic competence more accessible. But it doesn’t replace expertise, strategy, or the human relationship that good consulting is built on. It never will.

How I Actually Use AI
in My Work

I want to be specific here, because the conversation around AI in creative industries is way too vague. People talk about it like it’s either magic or a weapon. For me, it’s a tool — like Lightroom is a tool, like Canva is a tool, like a spreadsheet is a tool.

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Why I Left ChatGPT
and Switched to Claude

I want to talk about this directly because I think it matters — and not just as a tech preference.

I was a paying ChatGPT user. And for a while, it did the job. But over time I started paying attention to the company behind the tool, not just the tool itself.

In early 2026, a situation unfolded that made my decision very easy. Anthropic — the company that makes Claude — had a $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense. The Pentagon came back and demanded that Anthropic remove the ethical safety guardrails baked into that contract — the restrictions that prevented Claude from being used for things like domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems.

Anthropic’s CEO said publicly that the company could not in good conscience comply. They walked away from a $200 million contract rather than strip out their ethics.

Hours after that deadline passed, OpenAI signed a deal with the Pentagon.

I’m not here to tell you what to think about that. But I’ll tell you what I thought: I’d rather pay more for a product made by a company that holds its ground on ethics when there’s $200 million on the table than pay less for one that doesn’t.

The Honest Risks —
Because Pragmatic Means Both Sides

Here’s where I’ve landed on it: I try to use AI deliberately, not carelessly. I don’t run unnecessary queries. I don’t use it for things I can do myself just as fast. I think of it the way I think about flying — something with a real environmental cost that I choose carefully and use with intention, not reflexively. That doesn’t make the impact zero. But it’s the honest version of how I’m trying to navigate it.

And I’ll be direct about the other side of that equation too: as a single mom running a business without a team, without a partner splitting the load, without the kind of capital that lets you just hire your way out of a bottleneck — AI gives me a competitive edge I genuinely could not have otherwise. The same work that would take a fully staffed agency a week, I can do in a day. That access matters. That equity matters. I hold both things at once — the environmental weight of it and the very real way it has changed what’s possible for someone in my position. Neither cancels the other out.

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Small Business Has Always Been Hard.
Now We Have a Boost.

Running a small business in Atlantic Canada is not easy. The margins are tight, the market is smaller, the resources are thinner, and you are almost always doing the work of three people with the budget of one.

For the first time in my career, I have access to a tool that meaningfully levels the playing field. Not because AI replaces the expertise I’ve spent 15 years building — but because it removes the bottleneck between having great ideas and being able to execute them at the pace that modern marketing demands.

That’s not a threat to my business. That’s the best thing that’s happened to it in years.

The professionals who will struggle are the ones who refuse to learn. The ones who insist that adapting is selling out. The ones who are still buying film.

I’m not one of them. And if you’re reading this, you probably aren’t either.