S1
E5
55 mins
Jan 19, 2026
Designer Trained Her Own AI to Make Art
Listen on
Escha Vera got death threats for posting AI art. She kept posting anyway.
Perplexity's designer runs a record label, trained her own LoRAs, and built the Comet invitations that broke the internet — each one unique, generated at scale, but deeply intentional.
We talk about the hate, the ethics, and why prompting isn't a gimmick skill, but communication.
Chapters
[00:00] - "I can't post anything without death threats"
[01:48] - How I found Escha's work
[02:46] - Myspace and Neopets taught her to code
[04:39] - Losing self-expression in client work
[06:54] - "I call myself a designer and don't elaborate"
[08:05] - Perplexity's culture: high trust, high autonomy
[09:13] - "There's no roadmap, just do it"
[11:53] - How the Comet invitations actually got made
[14:51] - Scaling unique outputs to 10K+ generations
[17:44] - Evaluating AI tools as inputs vs outputs
[20:16] - Pushing Midjourney to break terms of service
[21:35] - "Being a good designer is about communication"
[24:22] - Trial and error prompting with Comet
[26:22] - Prompting as a second-class citizen to features
[30:48] - "Can you be pro AI and pro self-expression?"
[36:13] - The ethics question that kept her at Descript
[38:35] - The hate and vitriol from sharing AI work
[40:51] - "Ask how it was made before throwing hate"
[43:31] - The blurred line: how much of it is AI?
[45:31] - Should we disclose AI in our work?
[48:40] - Daily driving tools at Perplexity
[50:37] - The spinning planet she shipped in 5 minutes
