Now, is any of this true art, you might ask, or is it merely entertainment? I’m not sure it matters. Chiang dismisses the value of generative AI for either, defending the craft required for supposedly lowbrow genre work. Movements like pop art weakened the distinctions between “high” and “low” art decades ago, and many of AI art’s most vocal critics work in genres that might dismissively be dubbed “entertainment,” including web comics and mass-market fiction. Even Roger Ebert, who famously insisted the medium of video games could never be art, later confessed he’d found no great definition for what art was. “Is (X) really art?” is usually a debate about social status — and right now, we’re talking about whether AI-generated media can be enjoyable.