What is art?

I asked my friendly AI assistant what art is this morning. "What is art?" I asked.

By the way - I've really tried to hate it*. I'm a very contrary person. I'm not going to take your word for it that the sky is blue; I will be checking. I'm not generally a joiner. I don't know what a bandwagon is, but even if I did there's a very good chance I'm not jumping on it.

And it only wants to help! It's just constantly begging to be helpful. Obnoxiously helpful. And chipper. And friendly. If it was a person I would avoid it at all costs. And I did for a long time.

But it's so much fun.

Anyway, "What is art?"

"Art," it said, oozing helpfulness, "is a beautifully slippery concept—just when you think you've defined it, it wriggles into a new form."

It's not a bad answer. "Try it again, but this time emphasize the resistance art exerts against definition."

"Try to define it as beauty, and it hands you grotesque honesty. Call it expression, and it murmurs in silence. Categorize it as craft, and it dissolves into concept. The moment you think you’ve captured its essence, it mutates—cheekily elusive." That's just a snippet. It wrote a f*****g essay because of course it did. And it sneakily tried to slip in a couple of references about my own work because it remembers questions I've asked before. While I'm playing with it, it's drawing it's own picture of me. And remembering.

It's good answer, though, right? Not a big fan of the word "cheekily", but still.

For me it still just doesn't capture the extent to which art resists definition. But I'm not sure I could do better.

So don't listen to people who try to tell you that this or that isn't art because of whatever. They're wrong. Always. And also be careful what you tell your AI assistant because they remember.

*I'm talking specifically about the chatbot type interfaces. As I've mentioned before, I play with it for making images and music. Those I get. Those aren't pretending to be people.