There is a lot of Buzz about A.I.

“AI will act as your personal force multiplier, streamlining your daily schedule, sparking creative ideas when you’re stuck, and handling repetitive tasks so you can focus on what truly matters to you.”

Or

“AI will quietly become your most reliable co-author, research assistant, project manager, and idea sparring partner—handling the tedious parts of writing your next book, organizing your knowledge into fresh frameworks, spotting blind spots in your arguments, and giving you instant second drafts while you stay focused on the uniquely human parts: insight, voice, and meaning”

That’s an introduction in the words of AI engines Grok and Gemini. My readers (hi!) can see immediately that is not something I would write. I write differently.

A.I. aficianados would say that the A.I. could be trained to write like me.

Probably. I am a person of quirks, habits and patterns, many of which are intentional. I could train (program) a computer to us those same consistently.

And if I believe the A.I. it would become a “personal force multiplier.”

But is it art?

Is it silly to always be thinking about art? Sometimes a spade is a spade, especially when I need to move a little dirt.

Flashing back to Miriam in my first book, I think of camels crossing a desert. If me and the camel caravan need to get out of the blazing hot sun, it doesn’t need to be art. Miriam needs a respite now, and anything that supplies shade is a blessing.

Yes and yes. Use the tools and the grace that comes. Maybe it’s the shadow of a big rock, and maybe it’s an A.I. engine.

I’m still pondering Leo Tolstoy’s definition of art:

When the artist takes a feeling he or she has had, expressed it and is able to inspire that same feeling in the audience, that is art.

Art makes the connection, Inspiring and transmitting a feeling from person to another.

If a person created the shade with intention and imbued it with sentiment or emotion and if that creative self-expression had enough craft to spark an echoing response in another person

Art made something new in the world. That connection. The best art comes with a sense that I already know what has been shown.

The newness is the connection between the artist and the feeling arising in the observing audience.

With this working definition, I can justify that A.I. output cannot be art. There is no person originating a feeling.

And no person to connect to. Art is not only about beauty. I am beginning to see it’s about connection as well.