From my own experience being in a Graphic Comm class at Cypress High School, I have first hand seen that AI is allowed to be used and submitting for projects, often getting full credit or higher grades than those who didn't use AI.

We might claim that AI is a tool for artists, but until the ethics are cleared up, AI only hurts artists and student creativity. 

Use of AI programs (including Adobe) have no way of securing copyright or gaining permission from artists when they scrape artwork for AI usage. All AI, if not most, works off of stolen or plagiarized content to mish-mash images together in a Frankenstein esque manner. Despite AI not being able to be copyrighted due to its nature, it is allowed to be commercialized and sold in replacement of artists.

Using the stolen work of thousands and thousands of artists by just waiting a few minutes to generate an image is taking the jobs of those who worked so hard just to be stolen from. And now, our schools promote it. Even if it's the "future", we should always keep our integrity. Nothing about AI generation is ethical or morally correct.

Classes often have the excuse of AI not being able to be submitted unless it is modified, or drawn over, but I have firsthand witnessed pieces being 90% generated by AI, and only having a few points be touched on to fix errors. To claim that covering up a few mistakes on a generated prompt that took 0 effort to create, is somehow graded and considered on the SAME level as students that hand-draw their own artwork is as good as a sick prank. AI promotes laziness, and if you don't accept AI for essays in class, why are we accepting it for art?

Please sign to at the very least, capture some attention on the issue and possibly have a hard ban on generative AI in VAPA classes.