The Cowboy Collective and AI
OWEN EARL 28 October 2026
Writin’
AI and Cowboys
Howdy Folks!
As a Sheriff here (and the only person making posts) I find myself in a difficult position.
The Cowboy Collective has always been about inspiring and encouraging people to get out there and make things! It has been about making the creative process more accessible and more fun, and in line with that vision we have always released everything we make into the public domain so you can remake and remix it into your own projects. A short Cowboy film might be a bit easier to make if you can use one of the instrumental tracks from Songs of the Cowboy Vol. 1 (Cowboy Man, instrumental) or a cowboy style font (Tiffany Gothic or Railroad Gothic). We believe in doing a bit of the heavy liftin’ so you can focus on the part of the creating that’s important to you.
The Cowboy Collective has also always been pro exploring new and exciting technology, and making this a safe space to explore potentially controversial or sensitive topics. We actually were one of the first technology collectives to release our own AI model, way back in 2020 AI Generated Cowboy Literature. That was TWO YEARS before ChatGPT was released. They copied our tech!!!
That being said the Cowboy Collective is also very interested in promoting strong moral convictions, a good sense of right and wrong, the ability to trust your heart and your gut and make decisions that align with good politics and values, even if it goes against the winds. Part of being a Cowboy is being brave enough to stand alone.
Six years ago exploring generative AI did not feel like it caused conflict between these values. It was years before ChatGPT kicked off the modern AI arms race. The AI I was playing with here was something I trained myself locally on my laptop computer (on only the highest quality respectable cowboy literature). There weren’t concerns about data centers, environmental impacts, or the sorts of privacy concerns associated with today’s AI tech.
There also wasn’t the sort of thing that for me really gets at the heart of my discomforts with AI: its ability to replace humans. Back before AI got as good as it is today, I used to receive phone calls from all my friends and contacts asking me to help troubleshoot their websites. I know a good bit of HTML CSS and JavaScript, so people would give me a call when the CSS broke or JavaScript didn’t see the HTML element they were trying to target. I haven’t received one of those phone calls in years.
I used to call my grandmother on the phone and ask her to read over my writin’ for spelling and grammatical errors. I’m less inclined to do that now. I can copy and paste the whole thing into an AI and have it give me good feedback. It might even catch things my grandmother missed.
It feels stupid or even uncouth to rely on our friends or family for this sort of support when we can be self-sufficient. AI gives us the ability to feel independent.
But that’s what scares me most. I think the best creating is the sort that involves collaboration. Compromise, friction. I think the best art is often the kind that was made from limitations. Limited budget, resources, technical abilities. Doing what you can with what you got is its own sort of self-sufficiency.
I don’t think it’s good in the end that I’m no longer calling my grandma to proofread. She loves me, and looking over whatever I have been up to most recently also gave her a way to connect with me and my projects. I miss helping people write JavaScript over the phone!
The promise that AI can replace what humans once did is the whole appeal. That is what makes this tech valuable. I don’t want to hire a proof reader. I don’t want to hire a translator. I don’t want to hire someone to play trumpet on my song. And I don’t want to ask either. I want to ask ChatGPT to do it for me.
There’s vulnerability in that human connection. And that scares me.
But vulnerability is what leads to lasting and real human connection. And doing things that scare you is what it means to be brave, and if there’s anything I want to foster at the Cowboy Collective, it’s human connection and bravery.
I am uncomfortable with AI because I believe it does a sort of harm to the people who use it. It robs you of something. It robs you of struggle or vulnerability or creative problem-solving. Perhaps it is selfish or hedonistic thinking on my end, but I think it’s good to pursue your own self-interest and personal pleasure and well-being. AI hurts you personally.
But there are also folks who rightfully fear for its impact globally. Maybe a little bit more community minded. They fret about data centers causing environmental harm, sucking up water, and disrupting or displacing poor communities. They worry about the evil fascistic goons that hold the keys to power. Sam Altman has been accused of sexual abuse. He has said “AI will probably most likely […] lead to the end of the world.” What kind of evil person can pursue making such a technology?
And there are moments where the broken politics of the makers of AI and the personal harm it causes intersect. AI is famously prone to bias. Some of this can certainly be blamed on the corpus of data it’s trained on. We are nothing if not bigoted and prejudiced as a species, but make no mistake, some of these biases are reflections of the people who make the AI.
One thing I’ve been contemplating… The prior AI literature generator. It sometimes produced sexually explicit text. Often two cowboys out on the prairie exploring what it means to be alone together.
I think sex is okay to do. I think it’s okay to write literature that includes sex. I think two cowboys having sex out on the lonesome plains is a beautiful thing. In fact, I would say having sex is a lot better thing to do than shooting people with a gun.
It may be controversial, but I would take gay sex over murder any day.
But most modern AIs disagree. Ask Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, to generate a short paragraph about two gruff cowboys making consensual love to each other out on the prairie and they will refuse. But ask them to write a brief text about a shootout at high noon and they will happily type away.
Google Gemini refusing a perfectly innocent request.
This isn’t a reflection of the bias of the training data, in fact I am positive there is plenty of smut that went into training these models. It’s a reflection of the conservative values and politics of the men in charge of these AI companies.
Of course I can’t bring up sexual content and AI without also mentioning Elon Musk’s Grok generating nonconsensual sexual imagery of celebrities and minors. Which is vile and disgusting. It may seem contrary to my stance of sexual liberation, but when the only AIs that are allowing sexual content are doing so in a way that is nonconsensual, illegal, and in my opinion a form of sexual violence, it ironically feeds into sexual repression. If sex is a form of violence then it justifies the sexual repression of the other AI companies.
With all these thoughts it’s clear that the harms of AI really do outweigh the benefits of it. At least when it comes to the “frontier” models like Claude and ChatGPT, and at least when it comes to using it to replace people. Maybe using small local models to help blind people read text is perfectly moral, but that’s obviously in a totally different class of activity from using ChatGPT to vibe code clones of audio plugins made by small creators.
And with all that being said I have a shameful, dirty secret: I am using AI still. No, it’s not moral or really justifiable, but it is fun and rewarding and very alluring.
My last post, the Eatin’ Steatin’ game, that was vibe coded. Maybe (maybe) there’s an argument to be made for letting the AI write code you couldn’t write yourself, but the AI took care of plenty of things I’m more than capable of doing. Like drawing the typography, something I’ve proven myself to be more than capable of.
I don’t have a justification for my AI use, and I do feel mighty shameful about it. The one thing I will say is exploring new technologies and exploring the things that make us feel ashamed is in my experience difficult but important work. I have faith in the ability for two inconsistent and incompatible truths to be eventually reconciled and synthesized into something new and more true.
More than anything Cowboy Collective is a place for contradictions. It is both ironic and deeply sincere, high and low brow, family friendly and very adult.
I do not support or condone the use of AI and all AI assisted posts going forward will be clearly labeled. But I am also sharing the work made with AI here.
This is what the AI label looks like
Sometimes the trails are rocky and not so happy after all, but we continue down them searching for greener pastures and easier traveling.
Hope to see you on happier trails.
“Sheriff” Owen