A few days ago, I watched my daughter carefully decorate her doll’s hair with bright yellow flowers she had picked from the lawn.
To her, they were beautiful.
She arranged them with the concentration of an artist and the pride of a florist creating a masterpiece. The flowers sat perfectly in the doll’s blonde hair, transforming an ordinary toy into a princess crowned by nature itself.
What made the moment even more interesting was the fact that those flowers were dandelions; weed flowers.
Anyone who has ever tended a garden knows the reputation weeds carry. They invade flower beds, compete with carefully cultivated plants, spread aggressively, and seem to appear overnight no matter how much effort goes into removing them. To gardeners, they are often a nuisance, a problem to be solved.
But my daughter didn’t see any of that: She didn’t see an invasive species, she didn’t see a maintenance headache, she didn’t see something unwanted. She simply saw beauty.
And it made me wonder when so many of us lost that ability.
Today, we live in an age where criticism often arrives faster than appreciation. Social media has quietly trained us to become expert fault-finders. We scroll through posts searching for what is wrong rather than what is right. We examine photos for imperfections, stories for inconsistencies, and opinions for flaws.
The situation has become even more pronounced with the rise of artificial intelligence.
A piece of writing is eloquent? “Must be AI.”
An illustration is impressive? “Probably AI-generated.”
A photograph is stunning? “Looks fake.”
A video is polished? “There’s no way a real person made that.”
“If I haven’t created it, it must be AI-generated” has become an increasingly common attitude among some artists and authors when evaluating the work of others. Rather than assessing a piece on its own merits, they approach it with a preconceived bias and are often quick to voice their assumptions publicly. In doing so, they risk unfairly diminishing the value of the work and damaging the reputation of the artist, author, or creator behind it. Criticism should be based on evidence and thoughtful analysis, not on assumptions rooted in personal prejudice or resistance to new creative tools.
Of course, AI is real, and distinguishing between human and machine-generated content has become an important conversation. But somewhere amid the endless debates, accusations, and hot takes, we have developed a habit of looking at everything through a lens of doubt.
The result is that appreciation often becomes the first casualty.
As someone who works closely with authors and manuscripts, I often encounter writing that clearly shows the influence of AI. Sometimes it appears in the wording of a paragraph. Sometimes it reveals itself in dialogue that feels overly polished or emotionally uniform. Occasionally, entire chapters—or even entire story structures—bear the fingerprints of AI-generated content.
Yet my first reaction is never to point a finger and declare, “This is AI.”
Instead, I pause, I read, and I analyse.
Most importantly, I try to determine whether what I am seeing is AI-generated content or AI-assisted content. The difference matters.
A writer using AI as a brainstorming partner, research assistant, editor, or language aid is not the same as a writer pressing a button and outsourcing the creative process entirely. One is a tool supporting creativity; the other risks replacing it. The distinction is nuanced, and nuance is something social media discussions rarely reward.
Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed critics of AI have become like gardeners who see only weeds. The moment they detect a trace of AI influence, they dismiss the work without examining the craft, intent, or human contribution behind it.
True criticism requires more than suspicion. It requires understanding.
Before calling oneself a serious critic of AI in creative fields, it is worth learning the difference between AI-assisted creativity and AI-generated creativity. One involves a human creator using modern tools to strengthen their vision. The other may involve a machine doing most of the creative heavy lifting. Conflating the two helps neither artists nor audiences.
Just as my daughter sees flowers before she sees weeds, perhaps we should learn to see the creator before we see the tool.
My daughter, meanwhile, remains blissfully unaware of these complexities.
She doesn’t care whether a flower is classified as a weed.
She doesn’t care whether something is fashionable, valuable, or approved by experts.
She simply recognizes beauty when she sees it.
There is something profoundly refreshing about that.
Perhaps the lesson isn’t that weeds are good. Gardeners will continue pulling them, and for good reason. The lesson is that even in things we label as undesirable, there can still be beauty worth noticing.
Maybe we need a little more of that childlike perspective.
Maybe before asking, “What’s wrong with this?” we should occasionally ask, “What’s beautiful about it?”
Maybe before dismissing a piece of art because it might be AI-assisted, we should first consider whether it moved us, challenged us, or inspired us.
And maybe before joining the endless online hunt for flaws, we should remember a little girl decorating her doll with dandelions.
To the gardener, they were weeds.
To the child, they were flowers.
Sometimes the difference isn’t in what we’re looking at.
It’s in how we’re choosing to see it.
P.S. If you’re wondering whether I used AI while writing this article, I am not ashamed to admit that I did; Grammarly helped me edit and refine it. After all, using a tool to polish your writing is not the same as having it create your thoughts.
Know this: AI comes in many forms and serves many purposes. More often than not, even some of AI’s harshest critics have used AI-powered tools without realizing it. From spell-checkers and grammar assistants to search algorithms and recommendation systems, AI has been part of our daily lives for years, often unnoticed.
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