America's Youth AI Festival

I miss that comforting and overwhelming sun that warms my body while the morning breeze awakens my senses. The smell of arepas and coffee makes me feel at home as my mother calls me to get ready for school, my brother complains about wanting to keep sleeping, and the neighbors chat with my father about how the day will unfold. That is my community, my home, my people. That is my Venezuela.

I chose to represent my community through the Venezuelan immigrant experience because it is the one that has shaped my life the most. The two artworks I present include one that shows Venezuelan immigrants today and another that imagines Venezuelans returning to an advanced and restored Venezuela. Through these pieces, I want to express my connection to my country, the struggles immigrants face outside of it, and the hopeful future I believe Venezuela can achieve. Like many Venezuelans, I hope that the dictatorship will end one day so I can return to my country, embrace my family and friends, and walk in a free nation again. This hope is central to my vision of the future.

My present-day drawing shows a realistic illustration of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, portraying different aspects of their lives in a colorful and vibrant neighborhood. The people in the scene are dressed as their former professions in Venezuela-doctors, lawyers, and engineers-yet they now work as house cleaners, construction workers, and secretaries. With this drawing, I want to show the everyday immigrant experience and the sacrifices people make to rebuild their lives. The artwork uses a warm color palette, with emphasis on reds and blues, to communicate resilience and dignity. My second drawing presents a different vision: a strong, free, and modern Venezuela, represented by a group of hands from different backgrounds holding two versions of the Venezuelan flag-the original 7-star flag and the modified 8-star version. Three main areas of Venezuela's future success are shown: agricultural development, intelligent and self-sustainable structures, and beautiful tourist sites. The background is sky blue because that color represents unity among the people.

I used AI as a tool to improve my grammar and fluency, as well as to gather visual references for my designs. As English is my second language, expressing complex ideas can be challenging, but AI helped me communicate more clearly and organize my thoughts effectively. I do not see AI as a shortcut, but as a resource that supports learning and creativity. I learned that through AI, we can visualize the world we want to shape into reality. I believe that AI will become an important tool to help artists develop their ideas and design future communities. My two pieces reflect the beauty of immigration and the resilience that comes with it, as well as the future built as a result of that journey. My drawings serve as an example of how AI can be used as a framework for creativity, connecting dreams, reality, and my identity.

My artwork explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in both the present and the future of my community. Together, the two pieces illustrate how AI is already affecting human life and what could happen to humans if we continue to rely on it for trivial needs every day.

The first piece, Alive in Motion, represents my current community and focuses on how AI is beginning to integrate into everyday life. The buildings are bright and colorful, symbolizing liveliness, creativity, and emotion, all of which are human characteristics. In the center, two people are running, representing different stages of human interaction with AI-driven technology. The first person is fully human, as depicted with the white lines that represent the brain and nervous system of human biology. This person embodies a human's natural emotions and feelings since they still think for themselves. The second person appears to be human on the outside, but their brain has been replaced with a computer chip. This shows how AI is beginning to take over certain human creativity, such as thinking and decision-making.

The second piece, Optimized Rhythm, depicts the same community 50 years in the future. It represents the world I imagine if humans become too dependent on AI. In this version, the lights in the city are dull and faded, with much less color compared to 50 years earlier. This change reflects a loss of creativity, individuality, and human expression. Instead of humans, robots now dominate the stage, representing a society where people no longer think or act independently and rely heavily on AI. The two people in the second painting lack human anatomy as they have been replaced by technology. The figure in the corner controlling a robot with puppet strings shows how AI controls human thoughts. As we become more dependent on it, we begin to lose confidence and the ability to complete tasks without asking AI for assistance.

Both pieces feature running figures to represent how society is constantly changing and moving forward. However, the differences between the figures demonstrate how technological advancements may fundamentally change humans, including me, warning us to consider how much we should rely on AI.

This artwork explores the relationship between imagination, reading, and artificial intelligence. I started with a hand-drawn image of a bookshelf scene, showing small figures interacting with books. The drawing represents a quiet, personal space where the person in the image connects with stories and ideas and expresses themselves through books. It reflects the ability to imagine and be transported through reading.

I then used AI as a creative tool to expand on this idea. I uploaded my drawing into ChatGPT and asked it to imagine this same community fifty years in the future. Instead of replacing my idea, the AI built on it. It described a world where books become interactive and immersive, where readers can experience stories in new ways, and where technology enhances learning rather than taking away from it.

Even in this futuristic version, the main characteristics of the artwork stayed the same. The figure in the artwork is still reading, still sitting quietly, and still engaging with stories on a personal level. This became an important focus in the AI generated piece. Even though the visuals became more colorful, glowing, and surreal, I wanted to keep the sense of calm and connection to books.

The AI generated artwork combines both ideas from my original drawing and the AI's ideas. The glowing books and layered effects represent how technology might change in the future, while the figure sitting and reading represents what doesn't change. This contrast shows how human creativity and technology can exist together, rather than compete.

This project also made me think about authorship. The original idea came from me, but the AI introduced new possibilities that influenced the outcome. Instead of seeing AI as doing the work for me, I see it as a collaborator. I still made decisions about what to include, what to change, and how to visually represent the ideas. Overall, my artwork explores how technology can expand creativity. It suggests that the future of art is not human versus machine, but how the two can collaborate and expand creativity rather than limit it.

Chrysanthenums are a central part of my culture with my family being heavy tea drinkers and it being one of the only teas I like–slightly… So, because I value family, I put it in the future. I'm trying to insinuate that the future could be something amazing yet also destructive, and it depending on our actions and AI is the real worry. The glass covered chrysanthemum being able to be rewinded in its growth is incredible, yet could be dangerous to all we've ever known. The future is fragile and we need to protect it.

In the community today, the ant is walking towards the house through a cracked sidewalk (us people right now being so divided on issues, yet can't do anything about it as someone so "small"). Now, every moment some outrageous thing is being said that it doesn't even feel real anymore, so I decided to make my community today in monochrome. In the future, the tunnel is an actual tunnel in my community, incorporating many languages to showcase my town's diversity. I hope to express how we can all unite through our different cultural backgrounds into a future we all look forward to. I wanted to create a mangled mix-match piece with both good and bad.

My prompts for the AI images evolved from more simple renditions like "Generate a city with chrysanthemum" to more complex prompts. AI often added extra things it thought it best, but it often clashed with my direction. There was a lot of back and forth on the image creation process. I learnt AI needs very specific prompts if you want it to create the specific image you desire. Although making art traditionally can also include impossible things, AI brings new perspectives I would have never thought of. Of course, the prompts matter but sometimes the AI comes up with new things from just a few words. It's like we see another perspective, into AI's lens. I have always been a dreamer with my art, dreaming to make something transcendent. And AI might be one of the tools to pave the way (my brain and creative juices aren't forgotten though and bonus is that it's really fast).

I combined AI and traditional photography with my tunnel picture and AI generated chrysanthemum. The background behind the tunnel was generated by Adobe firefly, and also I tweaked the lighting in photoshop with layers of color grading. The other piece was completely generated by AI.