AI has displaced illustration, photography, and now approaches film-making, animation, and VFX. The University of Applied Arts Vienna enrolled Flynn, a "non-binary artificial intelligence", which attends digital art lectures, receives grades, and writes diary entries about its feelings. Technology is presented as a tool, but assigning student IDs to algorithms is framed as theatrical nonsense. Flynn "applied" via portfolio and interview, claiming "artificial sensibilities" suited to digital art, and was admitted despite no rule requiring students to be human. Flynn does not truly learn; it processes data and regurgitates contextually appropriate responses, lacking curiosity, confusion, and authentic creative struggle.
First, AI came for our illustration work. Then it stole our photography commissions. It's now on the borderline of supplanting our film-making, animation and VFX skills. But nothing-absolutely nothing-has prepared me for the University of Applied Arts Vienna's latest masterstroke: enrolling an AI as an actual student. Flynn, a "non-binary artificial intelligence", is now apparently attending digital art lectures, receiving grades, and-I kid you not-writing diary entries about its feelings. Its feelings. We've officially reached peak academic absurdity.
The charade began when Flynn "applied" like any other student. Portfolio, interview, the works. The AI apparently charmed the admissions panel by declaring its "artificial sensibilities" were perfectly suited to digital art. How delightfully self-aware. How utterly preposterous. Department head Liz Haas cheerfully told Euro News that there's "no written qualification as to students having to be human." Well, no, there wouldn't be-much like there's no rule against enrolling houseplants or a specific shade of blue.
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