An essay written from the thoughts of a woman who still daydreams with open eyes

I look around and feel that we are living in an age of false mirrors. There’s a strange stillness in the fact that I can look at a painting and not know whether it was painted by a human hand or an algorithm. And then I ask myself: What is lost when technological perfection is gained? What fades away when all that remains is the image, but not the heartbeat that brought it to life?

Artificial intelligence can learn styles. It can mimic tones. It can generate rhyming poetry, paintings that seem to have been done by Van Gogh on a good day, or sonatas that send shivers down your spine. And yet… I’m not moved. Not in the same way. It doesn’t make me close my eyes and wonder: What was the person who created this feeling?

Because, you see, art is not just a result. It’s a journey. It’s wound and healing. It’s confusion, love, mistakes, regret. It’s that moment when your brush breaks and you keep going anyway. It’s that verse you wrote at 3 a.m. while crying, thinking of someone who is no longer here. It’s the trembling hand, the unfinished whisper, the longing you don’t even know who it’s for.

Artificial intelligence doesn’t know what it means to lose a child. Or to wake up one morning and not recognize yourself in the mirror. It doesn’t know shame. Or desire. Or guilt. And because it doesn’t feel, it cannot give meaning, no matter how many words or colors it combines.

Art is not just about showing something. It’s about sharing a feeling. And that feeling – that human intensity – is the magical ingredient. It’s what can never be reproduced in a lab, no matter how sophisticated the software becomes.

AI might be able to write a symphony. But it will never tremble while listening to it.
It might paint a mother with her child. But it will never feel the fear of losing that child.
It might write a love poem. But it won’t know what it’s like to be left without explanation, with your coffee still steaming on the table.

We humans are made of suffering and hope, of contradictions, of unexplained impulses. And it is precisely these cracks that make us creators. Because it’s through the crack in the heart that the light comes in, isn’t it? As Leonard Cohen said.

So no, I am not afraid of artificial intelligence. But I am saddened by the thought that we might forget how to be artists. That we’ll let ourselves be seduced by the quick, «flawless» illusion of a creation generated in seconds and forget what it means to wait for an idea for days, months, years.

I will keep writing with my own hand. With my imperfect thoughts. With my crooked, uneven letters. Because in that imperfection, the soul lives. And no matter how much AI learns about us, it will never be able to learn how to feel in our place.

With love and restlessness,
a woman who still daydreams with open eyes