or, on AI art

published january 12, 2026

In 2016, the summer before my senior year of high school, I attended Governor's School for the Arts at Middle Tennessee State University on a scholarship after my art teacher encouraged me to apply. The governor's school program is essentially an opportunity for nerdy high schoolers to cosplay as college students for the summer - each school focuses on a specific subject and is held at a public university in the state, and students sleep in the dorms, eat in the dining halls, and enjoy a lack of parental supervision. To add realism to the experience, they even had boring 8ams in a strange-smelling lecture hall with an overly strict attendance policy. Our professor made quite the impression on the first day of class when he dedicated the entire session to one question: what is art?

I would be lying if I told you I remembered the exact conversation nine years later, but I remember that by the end of that first class period, every single student was in agreement: this guy is an arrogant prick. He would ask us to provide some criteria for the definition of art, and no matter what we said, no matter how well-reasoned we felt our argument, he was able to find something that contradicted that definition. Is art the product of creative expression and intent? Well, what about something like "Fountain"? It's a mass-produced urinal, but it was specifically chosen, titled, and put in a gallery, is that art? At what point did it become art? When it was placed in the gallery? When it was titled? When Duchamp purchased the object? When the porcelain was mixed and fired? When the engineer drew the original plans? Sure, maybe we'll agree that fountain is art, but does that mean the urinal down the hall is too? We might say art needs to be unique, but what about printmaking? You aren't actually going to tell me that printmaking, a course being offered at this very art school, isn't art, are you? We might say art's primary value is aesthetic, well what about pottery or weaving, which have clear use value? Does it stop being art when it's also what you use to hold your milk or wipe up a mess? Or what about graffiti? I mean, it's 2016 and Banksy is the coolest thing since sliced bread, but what about someone tagging their name or writing "Fuck the police?" how stylized does the typography have to be to become art and not just spray paint on a wall? And no, the racial and gendered dynamics at play here were not lost on us. We left the lecture with no conclusion about the definition of art, but we could agree that we found Mr. Devil's Advocate fucking insufferable.

One of the students used the printmaking studio to make shirts that said "I don't even know what art is" and sold them for $5 each. It doesn't fit me anymore, which is a real shame, because I think about it every time anyone talks about AI art.

As AI has grown more and more dominant in our society, I have waded through countless debates about whether or not AI art is, in fact, art. Whenever it comes up, I find myself back in that fluorescent lecture hall, growing increasingly frustrated as a man who looks like Mark Zuckerberg argued with teenagers for 2 hours. I've seen people argue that AI art can't be art because it's plagiarism, to which I say, what about collage? Or Warhol's whole shtick? My favorite piece of his is Marilyn Diptych, in which he used a press photo of Marilyn Monroe and was sued because he did not own the image. Does something cease being art by reason of plagiarism? I don't think so. To many, AI cannot create art because art comes from love, grief, pain, distinctly human experiences that AI simply cannot access. Personally, I find any argument that relies on some intangible human essence unconvincing. If growing up in the bible belt didn't make me believe in souls, someone being supremely annoying on the internet isn't going to either. Regardless, it's not so cut and dry. Take the case of Congo, a chimpanzee at the London Zoo who completed hundreds of drawings and paintings, many of them quite compelling. Zoologist and surrealist painter Desmond Morris gave him a pencil, taught him to hold a paintbrush, and observed as the chimp developed an artistic style that has been described as "lyrical abstract impressionism." he showed artistic preferences, demonstrated an understanding of balance and color, and had a sense of when his paintings were finished. One could argue that this is not art but rather a form of play, but then again, what is art if not a form of play? This isn't to say that art made by an AI is equivalent to art made by animals, since most people would concede that animals have some form of internal life while AI does not, but it pokes holes in the argument that humanity is necessary to be an artist. Others argue that it can't create anything new, and most of it is, frankly, ugly, but there are plenty of people that create repetitive, uninteresting work and are still recognized as artists.

My point is, I don't know what art is, you don't know what art is, nobody knows what art is, so endlessly debating whether or not AI can create art is not a productive conversation. There's plenty of things we should be discussing about AI - where data centers are being built and how they impact those communities, the spread of misinformation, and its use by police and military, to name a few. There's even things to discuss about its impact on art - artists are understandably worried about losing employment opportunities, and the prospect of studios that are already allergic to originality using AI to speed up an already creatively bankrupt process is upsetting. But that one question, "Is it art?" is not a question worth asking. I don't even know what art is, and pretending I do feels like a waste of time when facing a technofascist empire.