The irreplaceable soul

^{Photo taken by @xrayman on 27 August 2025 with Samsung A26}

Imagine a near future where Artificial Intelligence can paint like Michelangelo, compose like Mozart, or write like Mark Twain... Art would be perfect and virtually indistinguishable even by artists themselves...

An LLM could produce a masterpiece in as little time as it takes us to sing “Happy Birthday.”

“Why would an AI even bother to do that?”

I think the answer to that question gets to the very essence, to the heart of what it means to be human. Yes, we could ask an LLM, with some training (little and less time is needed to do so... and less and less will be needed), to draw with Salvador Dali or write like Charles Dickens...

Art created by AI is an incredible result and breathtaking to anyone, but without any underlying motivation or reason for the AI to do so.

An AI would be waiting expectantly, as always, for the open text box with the blinking cursor (with which it communicates with the outside world, for now) to be filled with a request, an idea, a purpose, which until then would not exist if there were nothing to awaken it from this state.

AI has no need to paint the world, nor even the need or desire to tell or talk about problems or emotions.

There are no feelings that it desperately needs to put down on paper or another medium before they fade away in an ever-changing reality.

“Humans create because it is innate to them.”

We have several very complex and distinct inner worlds, as well as a myriad of possibilities for different outcomes. We have undergone a whole social evolution, which has endowed us with a very detailed way of storing countless complex emotional memories.

There is a reason why we are existentially distressed, and that is what we have, that our very complex inner worlds and realities, as well as our own social nature, make us somewhat imperfect and always thirsty to create.

We have to understand what we are feeling and we have to express it. It is stronger than our existence. Of course, not all of us have the same way of doing it, and if we happen to use similar forms, such as music, painting, composition, writing, each of us does it in our own way... Influenced by everything we have experienced, and by the thoughts we want to convey, or even those we didn't want to, but which emerge.

For humans, creativity is a necessity.

The lyrics of a song that speak to us of a pain we could not otherwise imagine or understand, or a painting that conveys the joy of a face that the artist imagined, or translated into the unique and magical dance that he imprinted on the brush, or in the colors or shapes he chose, or even in the very format and medium he used. Everything counts!

Humans don't need to be told to produce art or to express themselves. It's something that is innate to us. It's something we do from the moment we are born.

And for now, that inner spirit cannot be replaced...