Creativity, Code, and the Human Spark: Why Using AI in Art Isn’t Cheating

“We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us.”
— Marshall McLuhan, media theorist

In today’s creative landscape, a strange tension hums beneath the surface. On one hand, technology has never offered more possibility: instant idea generation, image creation, story structure, and even musical composition at your fingertips. On the other hand, that very ease provokes suspicion. Is it still your art if a machine helped you make it? Can a story carry the same soul if you didn’t wrestle with every word?

For some, embracing AI in writing or visual art feels like a betrayal of tradition. For many creators — myself included — it feels like an evolution. And historically, evolution has been good for art.

Let’s look past the clickbait headlines and knee-jerk reactions and ask a deeper question. What does it mean to create, and how do our tools fit into that process?

The Tools Have Always Been Part of the Process

Long before Photoshop and ChatGPT, there was the paintbrush. Before that came the chisel, the loom, and the stylus pressed into a clay tablet.

Every generation has had its artistic shortcut: tools that made something easier, faster, or newly possible. The Renaissance masters used optical devices like the camera obscura to get perspective right. The invention of oil paints changed texture and depth forever. The typewriter revolutionized how writers approached pacing and revision. Word processors allowed authors to defeat spelling mistakes and grammatical errors with minimal effort.

The Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan once observed, “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” He wasn’t just talking about computers. Every new tool not only helps us create differently, but also think differently. The act of creation is never purely internal. It also depends on the medium, the feedback it gives, and the friction or fluidity of the process.

To reject AI because it is “just a tool” is to forget that every brushstroke is shaped by the bristles, and every sentence by the keys beneath the fingers. We have always collaborated with our tools. AI simply makes that relationship more visible.

Plato’s Cave, and the Shadows on the Wall

Long before our worries about synthetic intelligence, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato asked whether we can ever truly see the world as it is. In The Republic, he presents the Allegory of the Cave. A group of prisoners is chained inside a cave, able to see only the shadows cast on a wall. One prisoner escapes and sees the real world for the first time. When he returns, the others don’t believe him. The shadows are all they know.

Art has always helped us grapple with shadows. Through language, image, and sound, we try to make sense of the intangible. In this sense, using AI is like walking back into the cave with new tools for capturing those shadows. It lets us see the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

That is not to say AI is truth. But neither is any other medium. Every artistic process filters the world through layers of abstraction: the eye, the mind, the hand, and the tool. As Plato might argue, the question isn’t whether AI produces real creativity. The question is whether it reveals something new.

The Myth of the Lone Genius

One of the myths we cling to is that of the solitary genius. The painter alone in the studio. The writer toiling over a manuscript in a candlelit room. But most art does not emerge in isolation. It is fed by influence — by conversations, memories, books, and tools.

Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, best known for Gödel, Escher, Bach, once said, “A self is a pattern, not a thing.” That is a powerful idea when thinking about creativity. If we are patterns — webs of ideas, memories, and impulses constantly shifting — then tools like AI do not break that pattern. They extend it.

Using AI does not mean surrendering authorship. It means collaborating with something that has no self, but can reflect patterns back to you in unexpected ways. Sometimes it helps you say something you didn’t know you were trying to say. That isn’t theft. That is jazz.

AI as a Strange Mirror

Think of working with AI not as automation, but as conversation. When you prompt it to generate story ideas or illustrate a scene, you are not outsourcing your vision. You are exploring its edges.

Sougwen Chung, a visual artist known for working with AI and robotics, describes it like this: “Working with AI is a way to ask what it means to be human in a computational age.” She does not hide the presence of machines in her work. She invites it. The machine becomes both a collaborator and a challenge.

In that way, AI functions like a very fast and very strange sketchpad. You won’t use every idea it offers. But in responding to it, you better understand your own taste and meaning. This isn’t so different from surrealists using dreams or poets using stream-of-consciousness. The only difference is that the collaborator isn’t your subconscious. It is code.

Fear of the New, Love for the Familiar

One of history’s greatest thinkers, Socrates warned that the invention of writing would destroy memory and weaken the mind. He feared that relying on written words would reduce human understanding.

He wasn’t alone in that concern. The printing press was met with suspicion. So was photography. Every time a tool made something easier, critics worried it would erase authenticity.

And yet, none of those fears came true. We adapted. We created new forms. We learned how to use the tools wisely. Art evolved, but it did not disappear.

Futurist Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired, reminds us that “The most popular AI product in 20 years that everyone uses has not been invented yet.” We are still at the beginning of this era, and beginnings are often where creativity thrives.

What Matters Most Is Intention

Using AI to create is not inherently better or worse than using a pen or brush. What matters is how thoughtfully it is used.

Of course, there are questions about originality and ownership. But artists have always borrowed and remixed. They have always been in conversation with other works and influences. The key is transparency. Are you trying to say something real, or just hiding behind novelty?

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” The same can be said of tools. AI will not ruin creativity. But fear of it might, especially if it stops people from exploring.

The Spark Is Still Human

In the end, AI doesn’t care about wonder or grief or joy. That part still belongs to us.

A machine can offer surprises. It can help clarify a story or propose a path you hadn’t considered. But it cannot feel. And that is where the human voice still matters most.

Technology may change how we create. It does not change why we create. We still want to make meaning, to connect, to understand the world and leave a mark.

The future is not about replacing creativity. It is about expanding it.
Let’s stop asking whether AI-generated work counts as real art. Let’s start asking what we are going to do with this strange and powerful new brush.