Art & AI (!) Who Is the Artist now?

Art & AI (!) Who Is the Artist now? You are welcome both if you have read or not read the book, but please read the description so you know the theme, which most people have an opinion on :-) Creativity, Originality, Technology, and the Meaning of Art Inspired by David Hajdu’s The Uncanny Muse, this meetup explores a question that has become surprisingly difficult: what actually makes something art? Machines have influenced artistic creation for centuries, from mechanical instruments and photography to synthesizers and digital effects. AI may be another tool in that history. Or it may represent something fundamentally different: a technology capable of producing images, music, and writing with increasingly little direct human creation. So where does creativity actually reside—in the work, the intention, the process, or the person behind it? Topics we’ll touch on: Can AI genuinely create, or only imitate? Does art need a human intention behind it? If someone creates an extraordinary image with a prompt, who is the artist? Is originality even as important as we think? Why do we accept photography, synthesizers, and digital effects as artistic tools but react differently to AI? Does knowing that something was AI-generated change how we experience it? Could AI make human creativity more valuableor make much of it economically irrelevant? If we cannot tell whether a song, painting, or poem was made by a human, should it matter? And finally… is AI threatening art—or forcing us to rethink what art has always been? Casual discussion. No background in art, philosophy, or AI required—just curiosity and a willingness to question where creativity really comes from. Bring your tastes, your doubts, and perhaps something you consider art.