Is AI Ethical? The Truth About Using AI Tools Responsibly in 2025

Last Updated on June 11, 2025

Most AI was built on stolen content—but opting out won’t fix the system. Here’s how to use AI ethically without sacrificing your values or effectiveness. A practical framework for conscious AI use in 2025.

I haven’t been so excited to write a post in years. And I want to thank a very kind and intelligent woman who inspired it with a thoughtful email to something I sent my list a few weeks ago.

Here’s what I said in that email:

After sending that, I got pushback. And I welcomed it.

Because the ethics of AI are messy. And if we’re not asking hard questions, we’re probably using it wrong.

So here’s the question she asked me in response to my email:

Can you build an ethical AI platform on stolen land? Isn’t this just a 21st century version of colonizing and extracting value from what never belonged to you in the first place? [Most LLMs were built] on the words and work of writers and creators who were not compensated when their creative output was sucked into the machines without their knowledge, permission or payment.”

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Ooof. That hit.

It’s a valid—and necessary—question. And she is not wrong. That’s what led me to write the rest of this post—the one you’re reading now. This is where I stand today (and I reserve the right to change my mind as I learn more).

So if you’ve been wrestling with similar questions about AI—whether to use it, how to use it, or if using it makes you complicit in something fundamentally unethical—this one’s for you.

The Uncomfortable Facts: AI is built on Stolen Content

Most AI models (including ChatGPT, Claude, and others) were trained on massive datasets scraped from the internet without explicit consent. This includes:

• Copyrighted books and articles
• Blog posts and forum discussions
• Creative work from writers, many from marginalized communities
• Content that creators never agreed to have used for commercial AI training

There are active lawsuits happening right now. Authors like Sarah Silverman and George R.R. Martin are suing OpenAI. The New York Times is going after OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. Getty Images sued Stability AI for training on their watermarked content.

So yes—the foundation of most AI tools is ethically murky at best, exploitative at worst.

You Can’t Opt Out of AI Without Opting Out of Power

There’s a new wave of resistance brewing in the online business world: the ethical AI opt-out.

The logic goes like this: if AI was trained on stolen content, if it replicates patterns of exploitation, if it threatens creative livelihoods, then the morally correct thing to do is simple: don’t use it.

I get it. That reaction is born from integrity. From care. From a refusal to look the other way while Silicon Valley slurps up our humanity and spits out “productivity hacks.”

But here’s the inconvenient truth:

Opting out of AI doesn’t make you ethical. It just makes you less effective. And it won’t dismantle the system you’re trying to protest.

In fact, refusing to use AI for ethical reasons might be the most ethically ineffective move you can make.

Let’s break it down.

The Train Has Left the Station

Refusing to use AI is like refusing to use the internet in 1999 because it was being monetized by surveillance capitalism. Morally understandable. Practically…self-defeating.

AI is not a future trend. It’s now baked into:

• Search engines (yes, your beloved Google is now an AI tool)
• Email platforms (autocomplete is AI)
• Writing apps, hiring software, medical diagnostics, spreadsheets, note-taking tools, you name it.

To abstain from AI is to remove yourself from the very infrastructure of the modern world. It’s not protest; it’s self-erasure.

Big Tech Doesn’t Care About Your Opt-Out

Here’s the thing about rapacious systems: they don’t collapse because you stepped away.

Your refusal to use AI does not:

• Compensate the writers whose work was scraped
• Hold OpenAI, Meta, or Google accountable
• Change how data is harvested or used

It just means you are:

• Working longer hours
• Creating content less efficiently
• Getting less reach and lower ROI

It’s like boycotting electricity because fossil fuels power the grid. You’re not wrong. But unless you’re running your business on wind and moral outrage, you’re just sitting in the dark.

If Ethical People Don’t Use AI, Who Will?

If everyone who gives a damn about fairness, equity, and consent opts out of AI, guess who’s left to shape it?

That’s right: the bros who would clone your voice and sell it back to you in a SaaS platform.

You don’t change the system by ignoring it. You change it by engaging with it consciously, critically, and transparently.

You want reparations for creators whose work was scraped? Use your platform to advocate.

You want better AI laws and regulations? Use your tools to educate and organize.

You want to prove ethical AI use is possible? Show us.

For me, using AI is about reclaiming time and capacity—especially for folks who’ve been systemically under-resourced and overextended.

You’re Sacrificing Efficiency, Energy, and Income…for What?

AI is already saving business owners hours a week. That’s time you could use to:

• Rest
• Parent
• Write the weird blog post that’s been haunting you for months
• Organize a creative collective to push for tech reform

When you opt out entirely, you’re not helping the people who were harmed. You’re just choosing burnout over impact.

It’s like refusing to use GPS because it was developed by the military. You can take the long way, sure. Just don’t pretend you’re dismantling the Pentagon while you’re stuck in traffic.

So What Does Ethical AI Use Look Like?

Let’s get concrete:

• Train AI on your own content. Don’t prompt it to mimic someone else. Use it to organize, summarize, or improve your voice. And avoid pasting in content wholesale from others
• Use AI to amplify, not replace. Don’t use it to generate content from scratch (which could regurgitate uncredited material). Instead, feed it your own writing and have it help you edit, tighten, or reorganize. The ideas, voice, and experience are yours—AI just helps you communicate them more clearly.
• Push for better practices. Support lawsuits and policy changes that pressure big tech companies. Advocate for opt-out databases and consent-first models and actual compensation structures for creators whose work was used. The goal isn’t to use AI perfectly—it’s to help it evolve into something better.
• Disclose when AI helped. Transparency builds trust. Put a line at the end of your post: “Written by me, edited with AI.”
• Use public domain and licensed data when prompting. Feed it text from Project Gutenberg or Creative Commons, not random Medium articles.
• Source From Ethically-Trained Models When Possible: Most commercial models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) are trained on scraped content. But there are models trained on cleaner data, like Mistral AI, Bloom, Cohere’s Command R+ and Gretel.ai.
• Redirect the time + money saved toward justice. If AI saves me 10 hours this month, where am I putting that time? Donate. Mentor. Pay artists. Reinvest in human creativity. Using AI consciously can be a feminist act—but only if you don’t use the saved time to just…scale more.

This isn’t about pretending AI is clean. It’s about showing what reparative, values-aligned use looks like in a messy, imperfect system.

The Real Question Isn’t “Is AI Ethical?”

It’s “How can I use this imperfect tool in a way that aligns with my values?”

Because here’s the thing: we’re swimming in an ecosystem full of compromised ethics. Google scraped websites for years to build its search engine. Facebook profited off our data with zero remorse. Amazon undercuts sellers on its own platform.

That doesn’t excuse AI’s unethical training practices. But it does mean we’re not starting from neutral ground with any of our tools.

The answer isn’t to disengage completely—it’s to engage consciously.

My Take? Responsible AI Practices

We don’t burn down every house built on stolen land. We figure out how to live differently inside it. With acknowledgment. With reparations. With consent. With limits.

Can you build an ethical AI platform on stolen land? Not unless you address the theft.

Can you use existing AI in a more ethical, reparative way? Yes—if you don’t pretend it’s neutral, and if you center your humanity and values in how you wield it.

I’m not asking you to love AI or think it’s perfect. I’m asking you to consider that ethical people walking away from AI just leaves it in the hands of people who care less about ethics.

You don’t change the system by ignoring it. You change it by showing up differently.

Bottom Line:

If you’re not using AI because of its exploitative history, I respect your ethics. But I challenge your strategy.

The answer isn’t abstinence. It’s agency.

Don’t sit it out. Step in. Eyes wide open. Values intact. Power reclaimed.

Because if you wait for tech to be pure before you touch it, you’ll be waiting forever.

And you deserve to build a business, a body of work, and a life that runs on more than just principle. You deserve one that runs well.

Use the tools. Change the rules. Stay human.

xo, Kate (with the help of AI)

Note: All images were created with MagAI #affiliatelink

What do you think? I’m genuinely curious about your perspective on this—comment below and let me know where you land on the ethics of AI.