A Clear, Calm Voice in a Very Noisy AI Conversation: Meet Theresa Bensen

Lyric Kinard Author

Guest seminar Tuesday June 23 at 8pm ET — free for AVT members, recording available through June

Let's just say it out loud: AI is a lot right now.

Maybe you've felt that flicker of "is this going to replace me?" Or the busy-business-owner version — "I don't have time to learn one more thing." Or the quiet one so many of us carry: "everyone else seems to get this already, and I'm already behind."

If any of those landed, you're in exactly the right room.

On June 23rd I sat down with someone I genuinely cannot wait for you to meet. Not because she's going to tell you AI is magic. Not because she's going to sell you on the latest tool. But because she's going to have an honest, grounded, actually-useful conversation about what AI means for creative people — and she's one of the few people I've found who can do that without either the hype or the doom.

The recorded conversation will be available until the end of July in the Academy's free membership.

Meet Theresa Benson, The AI Quilter

Theresa's background is not what you'd expect.

She started her career as a semiconductor technical salesperson at Texas Instruments, fresh out of an electrical engineering degree, and spent decades moving through product and marketing leadership — eventually holding VP roles in both Product Management and Marketing simultaneously. She's an engineer by training and a storyteller by instinct. And she got into quilting, of all things, because a cranky customer told her she needed a hobby where she could experience not knowing something, go through the productive struggle, reach mastery, and end with a finished product.

That advice, she says, transformed her life.

Over the last two years she's built The AI Quilter — a creative brand and teaching business focused on helping quilters, makers, guilds, and libraries use AI thoughtfully. Not blindly. Not fearfully. Thoughtfully. She also wrote Digital Muse: Bringing AI Into Your Creative Process because, as she puts it, she didn't see anyone else speaking plainly about the possibilities in language everyone could understand. In an internet full of noise about AI, she wanted to be a clear, calm voice describing the good and the bad, and how to use it with intention.

Her whole philosophy comes down to one belief: creativity is human first. Tools should amplify your vision, never overwrite it.

That's the energy she's bringing us tomorrow night.

Why This Conversation Matters Right Now

I've been thinking about AI a lot lately — specifically about where it fits in a creative teaching business like mine, and like yours.

Here's what I keep coming back to: the risk isn't that AI will replace creative teachers. The risk is that we either ignore it entirely and get left behind, or we adopt it thoughtlessly and lose the thing that makes our teaching worth paying for — our actual human voice, perspective, and experience.

Theresa has spent her career finding the gap between where someone is and where they want to be, and helping them cross it. That's what she did as a salesperson. That's what she does as a quilter. And that's what she's doing with The AI Quilter. When I describe what AVT is trying to do for creative teachers, it's the same thing. Which is exactly why I wanted to bring her into this community.

What We'll Dig Into

This is a real conversation, not a presentation. Here's what's on the table:

• Practical AI tools that actually serve a creative business
• The misconceptions worth letting go of
• The harder questions — training data, copyright, the real environmental impact
• Where AI fits in your work, and where it absolutely doesn't
• Where this is all heading next
• Your questions — this is the part I'm most looking forward to

Theresa is wonderfully honest about her own process. She'll tell you straight out that she can't draw, sketch, or illustrate — she gets to her ideas through curiosity, color, iteration, and smart tools. That's the kind of grounded, real talk this community deserves.

Links:

Find Theresa at theaiquilter.com
Instagram and YouTube @TheAIQuilter
Theresa's Blog with a LOT of amazing articles about AI, grouped by topics such as Ethics & Values, Tips, and AI + Creativity

Theresa's Book: Digital Muse: Bringing AI Into Your Creative Process

This is an affiliate link - all commissions help support the AVT's scholarship program.

More Links concerning Copyright:

Human authorship requirement — settled Pure AI output with no human hand is not copyrightable. The Supreme Court denied cert in Thaler v. Perlmutter, March 2026, confirming this. Your creative hand is what protects the work. (Morgan Lewis)

Prompts alone don't make you the author Copyright Office, January 2025: prompts convey unprotectable ideas. Your selection, arrangement, and edits are what's protectable. (US Copyright Office AI report)

Training on copyrighted work: unsettled, case by case Two courts ruled training on legally acquired books is "transformative" fair use. But pirating those books is not. Anthropic settled with authors for $1.5 billion, about $3,000 per book. Meta won on the facts, but the judge warned that in many cases training without permission would likely be illegal. (Jackson Walker analysis)

TAKE IT DOWN Act — passed April 2025 Criminalizes non-consensual intimate imagery including AI deepfakes. Platforms must remove it quickly.

NO FAKES Act — pending Would create a right against AI clones of your voice and likeness. Senate Judiciary Committee considering it in 2026. Contested: critics say it could also suppress satire and commentary. (EFF 2025 review)

California AB 412 — pending Would require AI developers to disclose the copyrighted works used in training data. The transparency-first direction creatives have been asking for.

On the docket this fall

Andersen v. Stability AI — jury trial starts September 8, 2026 The one to watch for our world. Visual artists vs. an image generator, testing whether the AI model itself is an infringing copy. First US AI copyright jury trial. A verdict here speaks directly to image tools. (NYU JIPEL case overview) | (Full litigation tracker)

Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence — Third Circuit appeal, decision expected fall 2026 First appellate ruling on whether AI training is fair use. Not about creative work specifically, but the reasoning will shape every case that follows. (Bloomberg Law)

Getty v. Stability AI (US) — next conference November 5, 2026 Image rights, still in discovery. Getty won on narrow trademark grounds in the UK but abandoned the main training claim there. The US case is the one that matters. (Litigation tracker)

Disney + Universal v. Midjourney — discovery through August 2026 First major Hollywood studios in the AI image fight. No verdict this year, but motions expected late 2026. Sets the tone for how big IP holders approach image generators. (Norton Rose 2026 update)

Join Us

The recording will be available to members through the end of July. After that it comes down — AI moves fast enough that this kind of content has a short shelf life, and I want to make sure what we share stays current and useful.

Not a member yet? The AVT membership is free, and this seminar — along with monthly roundtables, business resources, and a community of creative educators building online teaching businesses — is what's waiting for you inside.

Join the free AVT Membership and get access to this seminar → HERE

Already a member? Find the Zoom link in the Live Event Links tab in Campus Commons

Categories: : Guest Seminar