When I gave a talk to a group of creatives and production agency leaders earlier this year I tried to articulate the reasons why AI would, for a while at least, struggle to capture the indefinable essence of a human-generated work of high creativity. Dr Rebecca Marks (in her wonderful article on art in the age of artificial intelligence) references Walter Benjamin’s description of this almost physical, spiritual presence in art as ‘aura’. Benjamin (in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’) argued that the process of mechanisation removes the essence that makes the creative work meaningful. As Dr Marks puts it:
‘Art without ‘aura’ is less obviously tied to a space, a ritual, or a specific person. When art is untethered to these things, it begins to lose its power because it becomes reproducible, interchangeable, and ultimately less capable of moving us’.
If ‘aura’ is all about originality, authorship, and presence, she says, then AI generated cultural artefacts are expressly not art. But then, in a nicely balanced exploration, she also offers up an interesting counterpoint. Around 1850, when photography was invented, many artists feared that it was the end of painting but instead it initiated a whole wave of new and revolutionary forms of art like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Modernism and Abstractism. Perhaps, if we’re optimists about AI’s impact on creativity and art, this technology will be no different.
The emergence of photography and its impact on art is revealing. Recognising that photography excelled at capturing realism, painting evolved from literal depiction. Impressionists like Monet and Degas leaned into light, movement, and atmospheric nuance, embracing asymmetry, cropped compositions, and blurred motion. Painters began exploring fleeting impressions, everyday scenes, and spontaneous glimpses rather than grand narratives. These were techniques that were inspired by the camera s vision but reimagined for the brush.
Meanwhile, pictorialist photographers, in an aesthetic echo of painting’s subjective expressiveness, went beyond the apparent mechanical neutrality of their medium by deliberately softening focus, manipulating tones, and emphasising mood over clarity. Photography inspired an evolution in painting, just as new forms of painting inspired an evolution in photography.
But I do think that there is a lot of significance in this idea that the true meaning of art and other forms of high creativity (writing, music, craft, food, design, architecture) comes from the creative process itself – from the creator’s experience of making. In fact I’d suggest that this idea applies to any creative output where we are looking to make a true connection with the audience. If we think about creativity as an act of imagination made tangible, we should really be thinking about how this idea applies to a much wider universe of creativity.
The Greeks have a word related to this. Meraki is the act of doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It is the infusing of work or action with personal essence. The act of pouring yourself into what you create. Work that leaves behind a trace of who you are in what you produce. Work that carries within it the maker’s humanity. When we look at any creative output that carries real meaning for us, it is this essence with which we are connecting.
The Spanish have a related concept. Duende is the emotional force in art or performance that makes it unforgettable. Its the spiritual essence, the intensity and authenticity that moves us and stirs the soul. For me, the best example of this was when I once went to the Teatro Flamenco Madrid and the intensity and spirit of the performance quite took my breathe away. That was Duende.
And of course the Japanese have a cultural philosophy which gives us another conceptual view on this. Wabi-sabi is the aesthetic philosophy that values imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. The beauty inherent in the natural flaws, cracks or weathered edges that give true meaning to objects. Whilst Wabi-sabi is evidence of life’s transience, it also finds grace in imperfection.
For me, this is the essence of what it means to infuse human sensibility into human-machine creativity. Infusing a work with soul and love, the spiritual intensity that stirs us, the cracks that enable us to glimpse the creator’s struggle to bring ideas to life. As AI develops at pace it risks mass-producing sameness and flattening culture. Technology without human intention risks becoming hyper-efficient but also hollow and empty. In designing with AI it will be the human fingerprint that we weave into systems, complete with (dareIsayit) the quirks and imperfections that humans have, which give systems unique character, individuality, soul and distinctiveness.
If human-in-the-loop means anything, it should mean this.
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