How Should I Draw AI? The Challenge Begins!

Continuing from yesterday, I worked more on my AI-themed illustration today! From the three small ideas I drew yesterday, I picked two to refine as rough sketches: one where someone confides a serious worry to AI, and another where someone is happily chatting with AI—but there’s a question hanging in the air about whether all this interaction with machines is making human-to-human connection fade.

The biggest challenge right now is: how do you draw AI? Sometimes it feels like AI is sitting right beside us, listening intently. But in reality, it doesn’t “understand” what I’m saying at all—it’s just crunching data and calculating, “When someone says A, B is probably the best response.” That’s what’s both funny and creepy to me: we get serious, maybe even emotional, and feel like we’re being understood… by something that isn’t actually listening. And yet—some people cry, or feel seen, or even comforted. Humans really are creatures of empathy, huh?

Back to the drawing challenge: I don’t think portraying AI as a robot makes sense. It’s not a humanoid; it’s software responding to us from the cloud. While researching, a random idea popped into my head: What if AI is more like a genie from Aladdin? You call out to it from your phone or device, and this bright, glowing entity made of floating 0s and 1s appears with a face and body that feel real. I thought it’d be fun to try drawing AI like that!

After sketching things out, I realized—both ideas are basically about the same thing: someone talking seriously to AI. The difference is just whether or not I include other people in the scene. Personally, I find the idea of someone whispering their deepest secrets to AI kind of hilarious, so I want to lean into that tomorrow and explore the composition further!