Amazing Adventure of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay details the creative process of two New York-based comic artists. As cousins, the pair creates a superhero comic series titled Escapist, infusing influences from the keystone film Citizen Kane, experiences from Czech Republic and United States, and insights on the change in the public perception of comics from children’s entertainment to a mature—and more legitimate—form of art.

Joe, the duo’s artistic arm, praises the aforementioned movie for its “inextricable braiding of image and narrative” and furthers his “ambitions for the ragged-edged and stapled little art form”. On the other hand, Sammy, the storyteller of the production, attests to the originality of their work in a court hearing as the landscape around the comic business changes. As a whole, the book gives a great vantage point on the complex amalgamation of allusions, emotional expressions and close-knit teamwork, all of which are key components of art.

As comics revolutionized the film industry with the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, AI is changing the creative process of all fields that deal with intellectual properties. Art fans or not, a vast number of people enjoy various forms of media; in 2025, the OTT industry alone generated $100B in revenue per year in America estimated based on multiple sources, and today Generation Z is the largest consumer group.

Reflecting on Kavalier and Clay’s procedures and realizing the ongoing change in creative industries, as an artist, I wonder if beings other than humans would be capable of creating art. Many say AI can.

Before we even begin discussing whether AI can create art, we first need to clarify what qualifies as art in the first place. Considering the candidacy of AI as an artist requires us to accept that art can be created by a non-human entity. The second requirement would be that the product be perceivable by human senses, as art as a concept existed in the realm of humanity and the definition of the word art always depends on human experience. Therefore, any artwork, whether made by a human or machine, must be able to be seen, heard or sensed by people. AI is capable of meeting those requirements, as it can display images on a screen and 3D print physical objects. However, simply producing something that can be sensed does not fully define art which brings into question the more complex requirements of it such as intent, emotion and originality.

One of the most essential of these qualities is artistic intent, a conscious decision to perform or create an artwork, which often involves the why behind the work.

Evgeny Kissin, a maestro pianist of 18th century composer Frédéric Chopin’s music, has stated that intention of the performer is crucial in recreating the polyphonic and emotional experience of the pieces. But AI, in its current form, does not operate in that way. It does not decide to create art independently; instead, it responds to prompts and follows learned patterns. The intent behind AI-generated work, then, belongs to the human, rather than to the computer system.

Artist Eunji Robyn Hwang also attests to the importance of intention, “I consider this sense of intention and lived experience to be an essential part of artistic creation.”

Her perspective reinforces the idea that art is not simply about producing an image or object but about expressing a consciously lived experience through creative work. Until AI creates its own drive to create art, AI will not possess artistic intent. Without it, its outputs will continue to remain fundamentally different from human art.

The example of color vocabulary shows that literature as an art form is also fundamentally tied to human biology. In fact, bodily desires, such as reproduction and survival, affect our emotions, and this connection explains why certain works resonate so universally. Audiences are able to relate to the reckless love in Romeo and Juliet because those emotions are rooted in human social and reproductive instincts. Humans are hardwired for social bonding and when we form close relationships, our brains build around on the other person’s presence.

Several artists explained how their experiences and emotions play a role in interpreting their art. Aiden Lee ‘28, a cellist from Loyola High Symphony Orchestra, emphasized the emotional connection that exists between musicians and their art. He explained that performing music is not just about playing correct notes, but about communicating feelings through sound. He noted that while AI may be capable of performing with perfect technique, it will still “lack the human experiences that allow musicians to bond with both the music and the audience.” Lee’s perspective reinforces the idea that artistic expression is deeply tied to our own experience and human emotion rather than technical ability alone.

Finally, art mandates originality. Creativity in art is often valued for its ability to present something new or reinterpret existing ideas in a meaningful way. Allusions in literature often add to the emotional experience of a book because they connect us through common experience. The prevalence of similarity in cultural themes and symbols, in art broadly but especially in literature, suggests that originality may not come from creating something entirely detached from the past, but from filtering existing influences through personal experience and perspective.

At first glance, AI appears to operate similarly. It draws from existing material trained on human data and then recombines those patterns into new outputs. So in that sense, the difference between human and AI creativity becomes less immediate than it first appears as both are products of what came before. However, humans reinterpret influence through lived experience, while AI processes influence statistically rather than artistically. Language, images and sounds are ultimately reduced into patterns and probability functions, stripping them from the emotional context that gives human art its meaning. Its outputs are designed to generate convincing results rather than generate what is personally meaningful to them. Perhaps that is why AI-generated art can imitate the appearance of originality while still feeling different from human reinterpretation.

Taken together, today’s AI can unquestionably generate images, music and writing capable of engaging our human senses. Yet throughout this discussion, human art remains inseparable from intention, lived experience and emotion in ways current AI cannot truly replicate. While AI will undoubtedly continue expanding artistic possibilities as a creative tool, that is fundamentally different from creating art in the human sense. Throughout history, new technologies have transformed how art is produced, and AI may simply be the next continuation of that process. Rather than replacing human creativity, AI will be more likely to redefine the tools through which humans express it.