This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Wilczynska, a 41-year-old watercolor artist and founder of Swil Arts who lives in San Diego. Prior to her art career, she worked as a software engineer in the finance and tech industries before quitting her job at Google in 2022. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I started using AI pretty early on.
I founded my art studio in 2023 — after quitting my software engineer job at Google the year prior — which was when generative AI started to become more accessible and powerful. In a way, I was growing my studio with it, and having a tech background made me more prone to…
