Must AI Be Mortal for Us to Truly Value Its Art?

Exploring the value of human mortality in the realm of creative expression.

Ondrej Svoboda
2 min readOct 14, 2023
AI-generated image of a gravestone. Courtesy of the author.

Have you ever admired an image only to lose some of that admiration upon learning that it wasn’t created by a human being but by AI?

This phenomenon isn’t isolated to just visual art; it extends to music, literature, and other forms of expression. When we know something was generated by artificial intelligence, it often seems to lose value in our eyes, no matter how good it might be. “It seems to lack soul,” many would say. But why is that?

I have a hypothesis: it’s due to human mortality.

The Essence of Human Touch

When we admire the work of an artist, musician, or any other creative individual, we recognize that they dedicated a percentage of their finite life to creating that piece.

Before that, they sacrificed another part of their life, learning and refining their skills to create such art. Their work carries the watermark of their life story, struggles, triumphs, and mortality.

Art, for many, is not just about the final piece but the journey that led to its creation. It’s about the late nights, the failed attempts, the moments of inspiration, and the years of…

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Ondrej Svoboda
Ondrej Svoboda

Written by Ondrej Svoboda

Smart home enthusiast, Team leader in IT, Technophile, Proud parent, Improv practitioner, Latent filmmaker and magician, Multipotentialite