We’ve heard this question before.

Will the arts die because of the internet? Because of cinema? Because of photography? Because of the printing press?

Grrr grrr… charcoal… grrr grrr? Maybe even in the caves, someone was already complaining about some new technology.

I grew up in a home surrounded by art. We are four siblings. Two are musicians, my sister studies theater, and one of my closest friends is a mega talented illustrator. I was the only one who took the engineering path.

While they talked about sheet music, rehearsals, and stages, or “brushstrokes of calculus”, I focused on logic, technology, and how things work. But I was never far from art. Quite the opposite. I’ve always observed it closely. And over time, I built friendships with artists and creators I deeply admire. Truly talented people.

Maybe that’s why, when those AI-generated Ghibli-style images started showing up, my reaction was different from most. I didn’t just see a passing trend or a threat to art. I saw a chance to talk about something bigger: what happens when technology and creativity merge and how AI fits into that equation.

Hayao Miyazaki, legendary creator of Studio Ghibli, once said that using AI in art is “an insult to life itself.” And I get it. To him, art is vulnerability, imperfection, sweat. It’s humanity seeing itself in the work. Removing that feels, at the very least, dangerous.

But what if we’re not removing. What if we’re freeing?

Many artists spend valuable time on technical, repetitive, mechanical tasks. Things that don’t require creativity, just patience. What if AI could take care of that? Not to replace the artist but to give them more time to create with purpose.

Truth is, this shift isn’t as drastic as it sounds. Painters have traded linen canvases for tablets. Writers adopted typewriters, computers, and text processors. Photographers embraced digital. Art evolves with the tools, but the nature of art has always been human.

And that’s where a philosophy I carry with me comes in Kung Fu. Not in the martial sense, but as a concept of mastery. Kung Fu is what you gain through practice, through effort over time. As Master Hundred Eyes said in the series Marco Polo:

“Kung Fu means supreme skill acquired through hard work. A great poet has Kung Fu. A painter, a calligrapher — they can have Kung Fu. Even the cook, the one who sweeps steps — or an exceptional servant — can have Kung Fu. Practice. Preparation. Endless repetition. Until your mind is exhausted and your bones ache. Until you’re too tired to sweat, too exhausted to breathe. That is the way. The only way one acquires Kung Fu.”

That quote sticks with me because it speaks of something no AI has: lived experience. Process. Soul. Individuality.

When an artist who has spent years training their eye, their gesture, their sensitivity finds a tool that frees them from what’s mechanical, they’re not taking a shortcut. They’re going deeper.

The hard work doesn’t disappear. It just shifts. It just shifts: from execution to vision. From repetition to intention. From technique to purpose.

Of course, unconscious use of AI could lead us to trivialize art. But the problem has never been the tool. It’s how we use it. AI doesn’t feel. It doesn’t dream. It doesn’t transform through creation. But it can be used by those who do.

Those Ghibli-style images don’t show the end of art. They show a turning point.

Maybe the true impact of AI on the arts isn’t what it can do alone, but what great artists could create if they didn’t have to waste energy on what’s nonessential.

And that… is still unimaginable.

PS: This text was co-created with an AI — while it held a gun to my head.