AI art poisons the soul
By Ranesia Duval
The machine does not desire,
does not live in a body
that imposes discomforts and misrecognitions,
[That] press[es] against the limits of its own interiority.
thingification by which we forget what it feels like to be human
passive consumers of algorithmic spectacle
mere objects
lifelessness zombification.
There is no self, no being
struggling and perpetually failing to be the ideal
within the machine
a kind of spectral mimicry
Soul-diminishing substitutes
artificial abundance suffocates
the essence of art
is lost in the process of its machinic invention
privatiz[ed] and automat[ed]
sterile echo of an absent maker
a thinning sense of the real
[of] the ties that hold
fragile souls,
we are at a crossroads
This poem is a collage using:
Reinhart, Eric. “The Trouble with AI Art Isn’t Just Lack of Originality. It’s Something Far Bigger.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 20 May 2025, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/20/ai-art-concerns-originality-connection.
A note from the poet about the process of writing “AI Art Poisons the Soul”:
“AI Art Poisons the Soul” was the result of an assignment to create a collage poem. When I read about the poetic concept, using another’s work(s) to create your own, I immediately thought of how AI often does just this. When I found Eric Reinhart's phenomenal article " The trouble with AI art isn't just the lack of originality. It's something far bigger," I thought it presented an exciting opportunity. Whether the poem is ironic in a good or bad way is up to the reader. Either way, I hope it invites discussion about AI art and what gives human-made art its “essence."