Most conversations about artists using generative AI treat the technology as either a shortcut or a threat. Genesis Kai — the AI-driven digital persona of artist Ming Shiu — stakes out a third position: AI as something to argue with. A new interview tied to Kai’s latest exhibition frames the practice explicitly as “creating in tension with AI,” and the phrase is doing real descriptive work, not just branding.
Disagreement as a working method
Rather than accepting a generative model’s output as a finished collaborator’s contribution, Kai’s process is built around maintaining friction with the tool — pushing back against what the system wants to produce, questioning its defaults, and treating each generation as one side of an ongoing argument rather than a delivered result. It’s a meaningfully different posture than either “AI made this for me” or “I used AI as a paintbrush” — closer to describing a difficult working relationship with a collaborator who has opinions of their own.
A digital persona with a real exhibition history
Kai isn’t a one-off experiment; Genesis Kai has an established exhibition track record as a distinct artistic identity. The interview arrives alongside The Crimson Hour, a new show at Acel Art Company in Seoul (through October 2, 2026), presented by ArtVerse Gallery and featuring Kai’s new series In the Name of What Remains. ArtVerse previously hosted Kai’s solo debut, “The Tension That Holds,” in Paris earlier this year — giving this new Seoul show a clear continuity with an existing body of work rather than reading as a standalone stunt. The interview itself was conducted by curator Valentina Buzzi in conversation with Genesis Kai, moderated by ArtVerse co-founder Sébastien Borget.