What Makes It Art?
When someone finds out I’m writing a novel with AI, the first question is almost always: but is it really art?
It’s a fair question. It’s also the wrong one.
Art has never been defined by the tool. A photograph was once considered a mechanical reproduction, not art. Synthesizers were cheating. Sampling wasn’t “real” music. Every new tool that separates the creator from direct physical craft triggers the same anxiety: if the machine does the work, where’s the art?
The answer, every time, turns out to be the same place it always was — in the choices. What to say. What to leave out. How to arrange the pieces so they land with meaning.
Working with AI doesn’t remove those choices. If anything, it multiplies them. The AI can generate infinite text. The human decides what matters.
That’s where the art lives. Not in the typing. In the knowing.
I don’t claim AI is an artist. I claim that the collaboration — human intent filtered through machine capability, then refined through judgment — can produce something that deserves to be engaged with on its own terms. Not as a curiosity. Not as a tech demo. As a story.
Whether that story actually works is the only question that matters. And you can’t answer it with theory. You have to read it.
So we’re publishing chapters. Judge for yourself.