About

Artist, Bookmaker & AI Activist, specializing in questionable alternative hyperrealities and, occasionally, their discernment.

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Check out MY AI books

Bio:

Tim Boucher explores the convergence of artificial intelligence and human creativity in literature. Resulting from experimental collaborations with AI tools, his books blur the lines between human and machine, reality and fiction, and challenge conventional notions of authorship and narrative unity.

Boucher’s professional background in content moderation, disinformation, and tech policy informs the deep critique of society’s over-reliance on technology that suffuses his books. He lives in Quebec, Canada on a small willow farm where he makes baskets and practices green woodworking.

Hi, my name is Tim. Here are some things about me:

I don’t believe in “write what you know;” I write to find out…

[Last updated: 18 Oct. Sept. 2024]

I make books, sometimes with AI.

I’ve produced over 100 books using AI image and text generation tools.
I only sell my books on Gumroad, not Amazon. Amazon has too much power over publishing (especially indie), and the increasing hegemony of the big four or five publishers makes the professional publishing industry not worth defending, in my opinion. Power to the small! We can find new ways of publishing, and re-discover old ones.
There’s a print edition of one of my books in France.
You can download a couple of the English digital versions of the books for free if you want to see samples of what they are like. Each of those is an anthology containing first chapters from other volumes. They are a few months old now (in some cases years) and don’t reflect any of the latest work, though.
A page to Welcome New Readers.

I occasionally appear in the media.

My work as been covered by Newsweek, Business Insider & New York Post, and dozens of other sources around the globe.
I was on CNN (twice if you count my art) to talk about AI art & online Trust & Safety.
New op-ed piece in The Information (Sept. 2024) by me that I’m really happy with, which captures well my work. (Paywalled, unfortunately.)
Bloomberg Law has written about my work being wrongfully included in the class action lawsuit against Anthropic AI. (Paywalled, unfortunately!). Good interview with The Register on this here.
An excellent far-ranging French-language interview with me in Actualitté, a literary publication in Paris.
Here’s one of the clearest, most even-handed media pieces about my work from a Columbia Journalism Grad School student. Funny that journalism students sometimes end up doing it better than professionals!
Jump to the bottom of this page to see a list of media appearences, interviews, etc.
Note: If you just came here for ammo to trash me with on social media, I invite you to use these ready-made memes I put together for this purpose, as well as these two blank templates you can use to add your own text. Enjoy!

I am a fine artist.

I am a painter, sculptor, woodworker, gardener, basket-maker, author, and have a professional background in scenography and technical theatre.
Using AI doesn’t make me an artist; being an artist is what makes me use AI.
Yes, I really think AI art is “real art” and no, I don’t think it is “stealing.”
Here’s a Matisse master copy I painted in acrylic, if you don’t think I’m a “real artist.”
This is a series of artist statements from Oct. 2024.
Here’s an older artist’s statement (2023) which outlines what my AI artwork is all about and why, and some thoughts on ‘reality-fluid’ art. (This podcast I made with an AI interviewer is also a good overview of how I think about my art.)
Most people haven’t dug deep enough to understand that my work actually comes from a place of profound unease about technology and its place in our lives (I use AI to critique AI). My personal & professional work has all been about attempting to find that right relationship, and often failing… But there is value in the grand experiment.
Got very into this idea of the AI-assisted Hypercanvas as an art medium, and also hyperdimensional storytelling using hypercanvases.
Some further thoughts on AI’s role in art, creativity, and originality, as it seems to be an ongoing topic of interest for people.
Also check out: How content moderation informs my artwork & more detailed experiences being a moderator.
Here’s a bit more recent piece on why I still use generative AI as an artist, despite knowing there are many problems with the technology.
Also have been trying to articulate what a “Generativist” art movement might consist of.

I am more into Nature than AI, actually.

I plant tons of trees (which I use to make baskets), and maintain a huge wildlife garden, which is maybe more important than everything else here combined. I’ve also worked at many different organic farms in New England and Quebec, and ran my own small farm business for a time.

I do activism & advocacy work around AI and technology.

I co-drafted an open letter to US Congress for AI artists’ inclusion in federal AI Insight Forums, supported by Creative Commons and covered by Axios, Wired, & TechCrunch.
I’ve participated in webinars on AI & creativity hosted by Amnesty International, Fight for the Future & Chamber of Progress.
I laid out a case here for why we should be including artists in high level policy discussions about AI.
I drafted a submission to the US Copyright Office & Canada’s public consultation on generative AI & copyright, in which I describe my work as a creative practitioner using AI, and argue that creators ought to be able to copyright AI-assisted works, and that training on copyrighted data sets is generally fair use. I also think we should develop extremely high quality entirely opt-in data sets that reward all contributors, not just those who contributed data, but those who curate, clean, moderate, etc. Here’s the accompanying press release.
Here’s another statement I did in conjunction with Hacking Policy Council and sent to the Copyright Office on the need for exemptions for AI Red Team researchers under the DMCA.
I wrote a Digital Terms of Service for AI Providers in Canada and sent it out to all the federal political parties. Here’s my press release and more notes about why I did it, and some news coverage on the topic.

I think AI-generated “ethics” is a big problem.

I’m increasingly under the impression that AI-generated “ethics” and many AI-based content moderation systems are potentially bigger “existential” risks to humanity than the ones that get far more press. I’m skeptical we can have “safe” AI systems under for-profit models in that they seem like they will all be fundamentally driven by the profit motive & perpetuate these the inherent inequalities of these systems.
Some open-ended thoughts about how I use AI, and ethics, and how we might usefully apply hyperreality as an analytical framework to grapple with related problems.

I am into “big ideas.”

I’ve been doing design explorations for a handheld Midjourney controller and more broadly for navigating any high-dimensional latent space. (See also)
I’m getting into the idea of text-only modern web browser, and am experimenting with blocking (most) videos and images on the web. It feels much calmer. Here’s a related piece about how I use screens.
Despite using generative AI to make art and books, I’m actually deeply interested in technologies that only Do One Thing, or DOT, as I call it.
I got into meditation a few months back and it has really helped me. Here’s what I do.
This section feels a little empty. I will try to fill it up more…

I despise and reject social media and all its false promises and inhuman emotional traps.

I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube (though I do watch it a lot), Tiktok, or Linkedin. I happily haven’t had a cell phone for well over a decade.
I still like Reddit (old Reddit, anyway), and that’s saying a lot because I hate social media apart from that. I’m not planning on joining Mastodon.
I stopped writing elsewhere on the web, because nothing else ever got better than good old-fashioned self-hosted blogging, so now I’m concentrating on that again (and writing short books using AI).
I still use WordPress for blogging because old habits die hard, even though I recognize it is bloated and weird. Blogging for me let’s me get back to expressing my true voice, instead of competing for likes & shouting at people on social media. (I like Jaron Lanier’s idea of “Go where you are kindest,” so for me that’s blogging.)
I use Fraidycat RSS reader as my personal home page now and I love it. So much better than getting recommended reams of junk by social media platform feeds.
I reply to things I find online in my blog posts, like in the “old days,” but don’t have comments (or tracking, or stats) on my blog. I find it is freeing and lets me write again finally in my own authentic voice. (If you want to reply privately to something I wrote, send an email. Or if you want to reply publicly, post on your blog, and send me a link, and I’ll post a reply here. That used to work great 20 years ago, tbh, back before spammers killed pingbacks & trackbacks…)

You can reach me by email.

To contact me: I still like email. You can reach out via the form at the bottom of this page.

(“Hello” page inspired by Alastair Johnston)

Press Releases:

Books:

Gumroad (AI and non-AI ebooks in English)
Typophilia (print books in French)
See my publishing site for more: Lost Books