“An insult to life itself,” said Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a famous animation studio, upon seeing an AI-generated animation project in 2016. Human creativity has always been an essential aspect of humanity, something that sets us apart from others. We see amazing artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson and Picasso; all incredible artists of history, but what is it that makes them great? What is it that makes art, art? 

For us, this is more than just a philosophical question. In this semester’s volume of Calvin’s very own art journal, we submitted an AI-generated poem, and it was one of the lucky few that made the cut into Dialogue. We did not do this just as a joke or to cheat to get into an art journal. We did this to start its namesake — a dialogue about art and AI. While we gave ChatGPT our idea and spent hours adjusting the prompt to give a better and more emotional final product, the poem is one hundred percent AI-generated, every word and syllable. The jury had no knowledge of this, and our poem was selected as one of the best-written pieces of poetry this semester. AI has no emotions or feelings, and yet it was deemed one of the best art pieces by the jurors of Dialogue.

One could also argue that this poem does indeed have a real human author, as we did ask for a poem with a specific theme, message and a specific tone. We did put in work fine-tuning the prompt for our AI-generated poem. Is that enough to make the poem “ours”? What about editors who change word choice for books and poems for authors all the time? Did they write it? Is art the idea or the actualization of it? The reader’s sympathy and connection for the “implied author’s” experience is real, and this is true for all art as we do not directly gain interpretations of the artist, but we interpret them as our own, and a good artist will be able to communicate their emotions and interpretations more effectively than others. But when the reader realizes that a piece was written by AI, the author disappears as the author has no emotions. If we do say that ChatGPT acted more as an editor than a writer, as we provided the prompt, does that make us the implied authors? It still feels wrong to consider the poem entirely ours.

How do we deal with this in the world of art? Art is subjective to everyone, pulled from emotions and experiences that we have had, and personal interpretations of art are part of what makes it beautiful. We decided to submit a poem created by AI to Dialogue to prompt the question: If our enjoyment of art comes from our interpretations of it, does it have to come from emotion at all if we can still experience this enjoyment? 

People concerned about AI and the future of art correctly point out that AI can’t be original by nature. But if AI learns patterns from the words of hundreds of thousands of poems, we do the same when we draw inspiration from the world around us. Take Anne Sexton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, who wrote a poem called “The Starry Night,” directly inspired by Van Gogh’s famous painting. Similarly, in music, we see this pattern of inspiration. One of our favorite worship songs right now is “Trust in God” by Elevation Worship, which mirrors the well-known hymn “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” by Fanny Crosby, who herself drew inspiration from the Bible.

Good art can be good art, regardless of who or what creates it. This was evident when experienced art jurors, tasked with evaluating poetry, read our poem. They weren’t focused on the identity of the author but rather on the emotions that the words conveyed, the depth of meaning, and the impact it had on them. They felt the rhythm, the mood and the heart of the poem and, after carefully considering all of this, deemed it objectively good. To them, it was a piece of art that stood on its own merits.

However, the truth is, most people will never truly appreciate this poem — not because of its quality, but because an AI wrote it. The mere knowledge that a machine created it often makes people question its authenticity and value, as if the act of creation somehow loses its validity in the hands of something not human. Something similar to this happened in 2024 with the controversy around the video game Palworld. Palworld was a huge hit in 2024, reaching an all-time peak of 2.1 million players. However, in the same year, players began accusing the game of depending heavily on AI-generated assets and code. There was no evidence to prove that the game created by 10 people used AI, but the rumor alone was enough to draw people away from the game. 

This raises an important question: Does the source of the art change its worth? If a poem moves someone, if it resonates deeply, does it matter whether it was crafted by a human or an AI? At its core, art is about the connection it creates, the emotions it evokes and the thoughts it inspires. Whether those words are formed by a human hand or an algorithm, they can still carry the same depth, the same power. We submitted the same poem to several online communities in addition to Dialogue. Online, readers often shared how much it resonated with them. We saw how an AI-generated poem invoked the emotions of people, so this proves further that art is subjective, as readers feel the emotions of the words in their own interpretation rather than the emotions that the author may have intended to convey.  

Going forward, the presence of AI-generated art is a reality that we must learn to face. As we walk into this AI-driven future, we must tread with curiosity and caution. How can we be authentic and creative? How can we use technology to elevate humanity, not erase it from art? Yes, our AI-written poem took a spot in Dialogue. Yes, that spot could have gone to someone else. But it also revealed a truth many of us hesitate to face: the world isn’t waiting for us to define what counts as “real” art. However, we do recognize that our poem has taken one of the spots available in Dialogue, which has prevented another well-written poem from getting into Dialogue in its place, and for that we do apologize.