The human behind the AI: How curiosity, creativity, and a cat built my career in AI art

From experimental images to thousands of projects worldwide

January 27, 2026

Ai Lani

I didn’t set out to build a brand or career in AI, and I definitely didn’t expect a fat, grumpy rescue cat to be part of the origin story.

For the past seven years, I’ve been traveling the world, living across Africa, Asia, Europe, and soon South America, learning how to adapt quickly and make life work wherever I land. I’ve always been creative, but traditional work never really fit my lifestyle. I needed something flexible that could move with me and that I could build from anywhere, as long as I had Wi-Fi.

So I created a Fiverr profile purely as an experiment.

Before I posted anything, I simply watched to see what others were doing, how they presented themselves, what styles were popular, and how people were positioning their work. A lot of it was impressive, but much of it felt polished, safe, and familiar.

So I did the opposite. I leaned into personality and play rather than polish and perfection, focusing on ideas that felt human, emotional, and sometimes a little weird.

That instinct ended up shaping everything.

My journey into AI

When AI started entering creative spaces, I didn’t see it as something cold or threatening. I saw it as a possibility that let me test ideas, explore variations, and move through creative possibilities far faster than traditional workflows ever allowed.

While it can do a lot, it still doesn’t know what matters. It doesn’t understand emotion or taste and can’t always tell if something feels empty or just right.

That’s where I, the human, come in.

I’m Ai Lani, an AI artist who builds worlds, visuals, and experiences with the help of AI. I bring the vision, the emotional instinct, the storytelling, and the final call. AI brings the speed.

Once I understood that balance, I was completely hooked and dove in hard.

I read everything I could find and tested tools obsessively. I followed updates, compared different platforms, spent countless hours refining my process, and stayed up late because I needed to know what else was possible. My goal wasn’t just to learn the tools but to understand how to guide them effectively. I didn’t worry about whether what I was learning would last because, as an artist working with technology, I know platforms and tools change, and some even disappear. What truly matters is the ability to guide ideas, shape outcomes, and trust when something feels right.

In the beginning, it was all about images.

Funny ones. Emotional ones. Experimental ones. I created cartoon versions of friends and family, tested styles, lighting, expressions, and moods just to see how far I could push things. Every image taught me something new.

Then Kitty showed up.

Kitty is my dad’s cat. She’s very round, a little grumpy, a little sassy, and deeply lovable. She was rescued in the middle of winter and suffered serious frostbite, so when I started experimenting with AI images, my first instinct wasn’t strategic at all. It was emotional.

This cat deserved a beach. So I put her on one.

Warm sand. Sunshine. Zero snow.

That image was meant as a gift for my dad’s girlfriend, but something unexpected happened.

The image was featured on Fiverr. I still remember getting the email. Equal parts excitement and nerves, because suddenly, people were seeing it and rewarding it. I watched the number of engagements climb into the hundreds.

My family and I were laughing at how ridiculous and perfect it was–a fat rescue cat on a beach stopping people mid-scroll.

That was the moment it really clicked. People weren’t reacting to AI. They were reacting to joy, humor, and feeling.

The orders started coming in, and momentum built quickly. I kept creating images, and people kept reaching out. My inbox simply didn’t stop.

One day, it was a funny pet portrait. Next, a brand concept. Then, a children’s book idea. And before I knew it, I was being asked to do things I’d never even considered before.

Every order was different, and every project pushed me to learn something new. I developed my own way of prompting (which I still use to this day), refining, and shaping images so they felt intentional instead of random. Clients noticed. They came back. They told others.

What started as experimentation quietly turned into a real, sustainable career.

From stills to animation

As soon as I felt confident with images, video arrived, and I jumped in immediately. I learned everything I could, experimented constantly, and pushed myself to understand motion, timing, and flow as quickly as possible. I treated video the same way I treated images when I first started: full focus, full curiosity, no hesitation.

I became obsessed with animation - how scenes are built, how faces move, how bodies communicate, how tiny details create connection. I watched films obsessively, broke scenes down frame by frame, and studied how everything worked together to create a feeling.

At one point, I even considered building a larger animation team to combine traditional skills with my new AI skills. I spoke with professional 3D animators, but during those conversations, I realized something: thanks to AI, I didn’t need a whole team after all. The tools were improving faster than I expected, and after nonstop studying and testing AI video tools, the gap I thought I needed to fill had quietly disappeared. I could do the work with just my creativity, vision, and AI.

It’s important for me to say: I maintain massive respect for freelancers who don’t use AI - especially traditional artists and 3D animators. Watching someone build a character, rig it, animate it frame by frame, troubleshoot, and still show up creatively the next day? That’s no joke. I see and respect the freelancers who manage to do it.

For me, using AI has never been about diminishing traditional skills. I still value fundamentals, movement, timing, emotion, and structure. I don’t believe creativity has a single right path, especially in a space that’s evolving as quickly as this one. There’s room for many paths here, and I don’t believe one approach diminishes another.

Where I am now

Today, my main focus is on both image and animation. Some projects are small, playful, and quick–like a single image, a short animation, or a moment of joy. Others are layered, cinematic, and complex, unfolding over weeks or months and involving deeper storytelling, world-building, and strategy.

This work has given me the freedom to travel, the joy of creating every day, and the opportunity to work with people all over the world. But it also brings those priceless moments that catch me completely off guard, like crying while writing a message to a client because their story hit closer than I expected, seeing my design printed, framed, and hanging on someone’s wall, hearing clients say, “This is exactly what I envisioned but couldn’t quite explain.", and learning that a book I helped with is officially being published with thousands of pre-orders.

I’ve delivered thousands of projects, reached over one million impressions, and earned 1,800+ five-star reviews, but moments like those never get old.

What the journey taught me

Freelancing can be very rewarding, but the journey isn’t always easy. For me, there were long nights. Holidays spent working. Deadlines met during grief. Missed birthdays because I was deep in a project and couldn’t switch my brain off.

Here’s what I learned about building a career that lasts:

Be selective with your clients. For a while, I took on too many clients. I realized I couldn’t give my best work or energy that way. It’s best to focus on fewer clients, deeper relationships, and bigger projects.

Protect your energy. Not every project will be a good fit for you. Trust your gut. Don’t force collaborations when the alignment wasn’t right.

Take time with each project. Treat every client with care. This way, they’ll keep coming back and may also bring some friends with them.

Trust the process. Fiverr rewards consistency, originality, and effort. If you’re willing to put the work in, it can open doors you didn’t even know existed.

Commit to your craft: Pick one thing you’re good at and really learn it. Let AI support you, not replace you. Be original instead of copying what everyone else is doing.

The bigger picture

Ai Lani is me. But she’s also bigger than me.

She’s curiosity, experimentation, emotion, and evolving technology working together. She’s about showing people that no idea is too strange, too ambitious, or too early to explore.

AI is the tool. The human is the heart.

And what started with curiosity, a lot of learning, and a fat cat on a beach turned into a creative life I never planned, but wouldn’t trade for anything.

A small note before you finish reading: If you’re wondering whether a human or AI wrote this, the answer is both, and that’s kind of the point. I wrote this article. The thoughts, the memories, the opinions, the stories. They are all mine. AI helped me polish a few edges, tighten a sentence here and there, and add a little extra sparkle where it fit. And that’s exactly how I use it in my work, as a support that helps ideas land a little more clearly and smoothly.

At its best, AI does what it did here. It amplifies what already exists, without taking away the heart behind it. And that balance is what I care about most.

- Ai Lani

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