In this episode, I look at how AI is impacting Jewish artistry itself: from how I and other Jewish artists research, sketch, and prototype with AI-generated imagery, to how algorithms are beginning to influence our visual language, ritual design, and the stories our communities tell about themselves. I raise concrete questions about authorship, ownership, and credit when AI systems remix Jewish symbols and styles at scale, and I ask what happens to kavannah, memory, and responsibility when part of the “hand” in Jewish art is computational. Throughout, I frame AI as both a powerful tool for midrashic reinterpretation and speculative Jewish futures, and a disruptive force that can flatten nuance, decontextualize heritage, or sideline human makers if we do not respond with clear ethical commitments.
Let’s not wrestle with this golem alone. Check out this episode.
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to the Jewish futurism Lab, where we unpack Torah, tech, and tomorrow. I’m Mike Wirth, Jewish futurist, community artist, and design educator coming to you from Crowntown, Charlotte, North Carolina.
In the previous episode, I talked about Shabbat as a design principle and why creative flow needs boundaries. Today, I want to talk about the tool everyone is arguing about: AI and artmaking.
This is the episode where Jewish futurism gets real about what happens when the newest technology meets the oldest creative tradition.
Let’s get into it.
Here’s the thing. Jewish artists have been in this position before.
When photography emerged in the late 1800s, painters panicked. When digital design arrived in the 1990s, I remember illustrators worrying their skills would become obsolete. Now AI is here, and we are asking the same question our ancestors asked:
Does this tool make me more creative or less human?
I want to flip that.
Instead of asking whether Jewish artists should use AI, I want to ask how Jewish artists can use AI in ways that stay true to who we are and what we are trying to build.
Let’s acknowledge the anxiety. It is real.
AI image generators are trained on millions of artworks without permission or compensation. AI can produce in seconds what takes us hours or days. Companies are already replacing illustrators and designers with AI outputs.
That fear makes sense.
You type a prompt into an AI tool and three seconds later you have an image that took your bubby’s generation a lifetime to learn how to paint.
So what is this?
Creation? Theft? Collaboration with something that has no soul, like a golem?
What does it mean when a people who have been creating for thousands of years suddenly have a tool that can make anything but understands nothing?
Let’s be honest. AI is still pretty dumb. And if you are a Jewish artist, there is an extra layer.
We have spent generations fighting to tell our own stories and control our own narratives. Now there is a tool that can generate “Jewish art” without understanding what it means to be Jewish. It can slap a Star of David onto anything. It can generate a menorah that looks cool but does not understand Hanukkah. It can produce Torah scrolls with the wrong number of columns or Hebrew letters that spell gibberish.
I have seen this in my own work.
In my article Judaism Has No Ready-Made Answer for AI, I wrote that Judaism has no neatly filed ruling for generative AI. And that is the point.
Judaism is a living tradition built on argument, interpretation, and contextual wisdom. We do not wait for someone to hand us answers. We wrestle with questions together.
Yes, the panic is real. But we have been here before.
In graduate school at Parsons School of Design in 2001, required reading included Walter Benjamin and his 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He asked what happens to art when it can be endlessly reproduced.
Benjamin said art has an aura, a sense of uniqueness tied to time and place. A painting in a museum has an aura. A photograph of that painting does not. Mechanical reproduction makes art accessible, but something shifts. Something is lost.
Now AI is doing to digital art what photography did to painting. It is reproducing not only the image but the act of creation itself.
So where is the aura of AI art?
Maybe the aura does not disappear. Maybe it moves from the object to the intention.
When the printing press arrived, scribes worried. When photography emerged, painters worried. Jewish artists like Man Ray and Diane Arbus used cameras to see the world differently.
Later, media theorist Lev Manovich wrote in Artificial Aesthetics about how AI can simulate aspects of an artist’s style but struggles when form and meaning are deeply intertwined. AI can copy surface aesthetics. It cannot live a Jewish life.
That matters.
Jewish futurism is not about decoration. It is about designing possible futures.
So here is my framework.
First: Are you using Jewish source material generatively?
Good looks like prompting AI to visualize a scene from Talmud, then reshaping it through your own interpretation. Problematic looks like typing “Jewish art” into a generator and calling it finished.
Second: Is this design or just decoration?
Jewish futurism builds futures. It prototypes. It iterates. It asks what the work does, not just how it looks.
Third: Does your process include limits?
AI has no Shabbat. You need one. Set time limits. Limit prompt variations. Require human refinement. Build in pause.
Fourth: Are you in conversation with lineage?
From Marc Chagall to El Lissitzky and the UNOVIS collective in Vitebsk, Jewish making has always been relational. AI can simulate a style. It cannot understand why that style mattered.
Fifth: Can you explain your choices?
If you cannot articulate why something serves your vision, it is not finished.
Sixth: Is your particularity present?
Jewish futurism values specificity. Your family stories. Your corner of the diaspora. If anyone could have made it, push further.
And finally: Does it make you feel human while you are doing it?
If yes, you are on the right path.
I use AI through a hybrid method. AI for ideation. Me for refinement. I generate variations, print them, mark them up, then rebuild them by hand in Photoshop, Procreate, or with pencil and paper.
AI for process, not just product.
I document prompts. I disclose when AI was involved. I treat AI like a study partner, not a rabbi. It is my hevruta, not my authority.
I have even fine-tuned a version of Stable Diffusion on my own artwork so it reflects my visual language rather than borrowing someone else’s. Not to automate my creativity, but to support it.
And I build in my Shabbat. I step away. I come back. Most outputs are not good. That is fine. They teach me what not to do.
AI is not going away. If Jewish artists sit this out, others will use these tools to tell Jewish stories without us.
Photography did not kill painting. Digital tools did not kill hand illustration. AI will not kill art. But it will change who makes it and how.
Jewish futurism says stay in the conversation.
Use the tools. Keep your soul intact. Make something only you could make.
The aura may not disappear. It may move from the object into the why.
I use AI not because it replaces me, but because it helps me be more of who I already am: a designer, a remix thinker, a teacher, a systems builder.
Use it wisely. Use it with intention. Keep your hand on the erase key.
You have a soul. AI does not.
Bring your kavana. Bring your lineage. Bring your particular Jewish vision of the future.
That is Jewish futurism. Not Jewish-flavored content. Not aesthetic vibes. Real engagement.
If this resonated, share it with another artist wrestling with these questions.
Until next time: keep making, keep questioning, keep your hands dirty and your intentions clear.
I’m Mike Wirth. This has been the Jewish futurism Lab.