What is Art?: A Discussion of AI and the Future of Artists
“Are you worried that AI will just make all the art for you and replace you?” I was asked in 2023 by a good family friend as I talked up my dreams as an artist.
“No,” I responded with a smile. “It is against the very definition of art; it is counter-humanity. They cannot replace me.”
It’s 2025. My response is the same as it was two years ago. I am not worried about the future of creatives and creativity. On the contrary, I am more hopeful and excited than I ever have been. Here is why:
In case you haven’t noticed, generative AI is taking over many, many activities, jobs, and even basic human thinking. Weirdly enough, creative activities seem to be the first and most widely attacked and “replaced” activity. Why write a novel when AI can do it for you? Why paint a picture when AI can generate a picture that’s ‘good enough’? Why spend hours animating a short film when AI could animate it for you?
And here’s a kicker: why pay someone to do these creative activities for you (since you have already admitted you don’t have the skill, time, or work ethic yourself to do it—not necessarily bad things to admit), when AI can do it for you?
Some people are frightened by this. And I don’t want to minimize the experience many creatives are facing right now of losing their jobs to AI. But as a creative myself, I see this as my golden opportunity.
Why? Because AI is not writing a novel. AI is not painting a picture. AI is not animating a film. And it certainly is not making music or doing any other creative activity at all, because AI cannot create. Leastways, it cannot create art.
Why?
We need to look at what art is. In the classical sense, an ‘art’ is a practice. This is distinguishable from a science (from the Latin, scientia—knowledge) which is a body of knowledge that one might master. Science is a habit of the theoretic intellect, whose task “is to distinguish between the true and the false” (Brennan, Thomistic Psychology, 21). An art, in contrast, is a practice; “an ability to create and produce” (Barney, The Classical Distinction Between the Liberal Arts and Sciences, italics mine), which is a habit of the practical intellect—that which “distinguish[es] between the good and the bad” (Brennan, 21). For example, I can master knowledge of woodworking, but that does not mean I have mastered the ability to woodwork; I can master everything there is to know about writing, but that does not make me a good writer. This is why we talk about the Liberal Arts as such; they are practices that set you free to live a flourishing human life, not simply bodies of knowledge to inhale and vomit forth as many of my students might think their education is about. But that is a whole other discussion for another time. . .
Art is a practice; an ability to create. As such, by definition it will require time and effort (and talent). And as such, by definition it can only be possessed by a being which can create. And, according to Aristotle, art (in the sense of works of art) is a mimetic, that is, imitative endeavor that reveals some truth about nature. One cannot reveal truth without first knowing or experiencing truth.
Now, I know this is already getting into some philosophical and epistemological weeds, but bear with me.
I argue that AI does not know anything. It certainly cannot experience anything. According to Aristotle and Aquinas, knowledge is acquired through sensory experience and reason, or the intellect, which is “a power of the soul alone” (Brennan, 20). Now, last I checked, AI does not have senses or experiences, and AI does not have a soul—an anima; i.e., it is not animated or alive. It is not conscious and cannot make judgments, and it therefore cannot know anything. Remember what AI stands for: Artificial Intelligence. AI is created by humans, and last I checked, humans cannot create souls. It therefore does not have the faculty of reason, which is a faculty of the rational soul.
Pardon the philosophical rant. Back to the present topic. AI cannot know, either through sensory knowledge or through discursive reasoning. It has no theoretic intellect, so it cannot do science, and it has no practical intellect, so it cannot create or make art.
“But, Theresa,” you say, “It tells me all kinds of information!”
True, says I, but it does not know the information. It collects it, synthesizes it, and spits it out, potentially in new patterns; but that is not knowledge of the thing. That is simply the work of a complex machine.
I repeat: AI cannot know, and it therefore cannot create. And to circle back to our discussion of art as a mimetic ability to create and reveal truth about nature, it follows that AI is unable to make art.
And you can tell. Your mom can tell. Your neighbor can tell. Every human being can tell, because there is no truth that is revealed by anything generated by AI. It has not internalized truth, and it therefore cannot create anything that reveals it.
Creation is an act of God. As human beings, we have been given the gift of co-creating with Him. Perhaps I will create a blog post soon discussing my thoughts on words (because I have been contemplating the beauty of words), but suffice it here to say that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-2, italics mine). Creation is the act of God, I AM WHO AM. To co-create is to come into contact with—to commune with—God.
So when I speak or write with my words, my soul acts with God to create something new, unique, and unrepeatable—something that you are reading now. Your mind is meeting with mine. Your soul is touching mine.
And when I paint with my brushes, my soul acts with God to create something new, unique, and unrepeatable—something you can behold with your eyes. Your soul meets with mine.
And when I write a song, or even perform a song someone else has written, my soul acts with God to create something new, unique, and unrepeatable—something you can hear with your ears. Your soul meets with mine.
Art is an act of the soul.
There is no meeting of souls when AI “generates art.”
I am not worried about creatives or creativity with the rise of AI. I am excited, because until the world was given soul-less art, it did not know that it had something so good, true, and beautiful. And the world is going to want to meet with souls again.
As an artist, a musician, a writer, this is my time. To quote St. Joan of Arc, “I am not afraid. I was born for this.”
Bibliography
Barney, Jason. “The Classical Distinction Between the Liberal Arts and Sciences.” Educational
Renaissance. Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, 2018.
https://educationalrenaissance.com/2018/07/20/the-classical-distinction-between-an-art-
and-a-science/
Brennan, O.P., Robert Edward. Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of
Man, edited by Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., 20-21. Providence, Rhode Island: Cluny Media, 2016.
*Despite my love of EM dashes, which I recently learned is a dead giveaway of AI writing (RIP the fact that good writing is suspicious now in this illiterate world), this blog post was 100% human created. You’re meeting with my soul. You’re welcome.
