That Indefinable Something AI May Not Steal From Us — At Least Not Yet

By Ghislain Journé

Can Artificial Intelligence Capture the “Je Ne Sais Quoi”?

In a recent episode of Conversations With Tyler, Sam Altman is asked whether the next iteration of ChatGPT will be a great poet. The interviewer suggests that the greatest poets ultimately escape any set of criteria a machine could absorb — invoking that elusive je ne sais quoi: a surplus of soul, a residue of mystery, something that cannot be fully explained and therefore cannot be taught.

Altman believes artificial intelligence will get there — and that, in the end, we will not much care. He points to a familiar precedent: in 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. Today, machines outperform even the greatest chess champions, and yet the game has lost none of its appeal. If anything, it has grown richer, more studied, more alive.

AI and Creativity: Why Art Resists Automation

But can an algorithmic victory in a tightly bounded game truly be compared to the creation of literary or artistic genius — something born of an accumulation of lived experience, intuition, ambiguity, transgression, and emotion? Chess unfolds within a defined universe of rules and possibilities. Art, by contrast, emerges from an infinitely porous one.

A Quiet Victory for Human Craft

Recent cultural moments offer a telling contrast.

At the Game Awards in Los Angeles, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, developed by the Montpellier-based studio Sandfall Interactive, was crowned Game of the Year — praised for its narrative depth, emotional resonance, and distinctive artistic vision.

At the same time, Le Mal Aimé, a Christmas film for the French retailer Intermarché produced by another Montpellier studio, Illogic Studios, went viral, widely described as a small “jewel of emotion.”

Set against these works, recent AI-generated advertising campaigns from global giants like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s feel curiously weightless — technically impressive, perhaps, but ultimately forgettable.

This contrast is not merely aesthetic. It speaks to something deeper: a reminder that meaning is not manufactured through optimization alone. It must be lived, shaped, and felt.

And incidentally, it marks a quiet victory for made in France — not as nostalgia, but as proof that cultural specificity, human craft, and emotional intelligence still matter.

This tension between AI and creativity reveals why meaning cannot be reduced to optimization alone. For now at least, the world hasn’t lost its human edge.

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