At Print Kits we aim to use 3D printing to make interesting and exciting projects and show that adults and kids alike can have fun and thriving hobbies. With the rise of generative AI (LLMs) we faced decisions on whether to use these new tools in our projects. Here's where we landed: We only use AI to enhance our creativity, not as a replacement for it.

We believe in paying artists for designs and consistently do. We pay designers to license projects, we pay artists for graphic and web design, and internally we learn tools for our own creative endeavors, like practicing video editing, photography, and CAD (computer aided design). We are also open to using generative AI in conjunction with these tools. Currently this manifests in using tools like Claude to help add new features to a project's code, or to add new sections or buttons to our website that would have been time consuming to do manually. This additional speed lets us get back to the work we enjoy most and are best at.

As with 3D printing and other forms of technology enhancing existing art forms, we believe AI can do the same. That said, the rollout of these models concerns us. We plan to tread carefully in using AI tools to complement our current workflow due to the biases inherent in training data, stolen intellectual property from artists and creatives, and concerns that AI will accumulate wealth for the already rich instead of efficiencies being shared by everyone in society. It’s a tricky balance that we are still working on getting right, and one that will continue to evolve as the technology and business models surrounding it matures.