AI Art Festival Makes In-Person Debut at 2026 Inclusion·Bund Conference in Shanghai

An afternoon tour titled "Opening the AI Art Festival with the Artists" was held in the exhibition hall on September 9, where artists, curators and creators discussed a shared question: as AI takes part in creation more deeply, what happens to human creativity.

A person in charge of the AI Art Festival said that because technology now shapes daily life, discussion should cover not only what AI can do but how it changes people. The festival, this person said, is a new experiment for the conference whose core is not to train people into more efficient machines but to rediscover and activate abilities that are more human. "We increasingly believe AI will not devalue human creativity," the person said. "As more standardized knowledge and skills are taken over by AI, imagination, sensibility, aesthetics and judgment become scarcer."

That idea runs through the AI concept art exhibition "Entangled, and Then Day for Night," described as China's first AI concept art exhibition guided by an Agent. The hall is designed as a "living space" that interacts with visitors. Nian Zixuan, chief curator of the exhibition and head of the art team Semicolon C, said the show is not meant to be watched passively. "We deliberately set up 'cognitive friction,'" Nian said. "Visitors can follow the agent's guidance or choose their own route. Every choice is a process of negotiating with AI, judging and allocating attention, which is the 'entanglement' the exhibition explores."

The exhibition brings together more than 20 artists from China and abroad, including Gene Kogan, an early figure in modern AI art, Guo Ruiwen and Luo Xiao. Chris Speed, director of the Regenerative Futures Institute at RMIT University in Australia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Wang Yun, a neuroscientist at Fudan University, and Li Qiansheng, a professor at the Shanghai University Fine Arts College, serve as joint academic chairs.

Among the works on display is "AARON at Tsukuba, #2 19-3-85," made in 1985 by the AI system AARON, built by AI art pioneer Harold Cohen, which drew and signed the piece on its own. AARON is regarded as the world's first AI system designed specifically for art creation, and the work is the only known art piece autonomously signed by AARON.

The "Otherspace" AI film screening program, organized with platforms and institutions including MiniMax, Kling AI, TapNow, Wanxiang, HappyHorse, updream and Leidiansuo, presents more than 100 AI films spanning shorts, animation, music videos and experimental work. The selection includes award winners from the Cannes World AI Film Festival and the Beijing International Film Festival, along with widely shared AI shorts and premieres.

Among them, the AI ink-wash short "One Thought" won the Best AI Short award in the China section of the 2026 World AI Film Festival and was screened officially at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. "The World of Zhuangzi" series, initiated and executive-produced by Yi Zhongtian, reinterprets Zhuangzi's butterfly dream through AI imagery; its first micro film, "Butterfly Dream," passed one million views within three days of release.

The most live element of the program is scheduled for the evening of September 11, when the conference and Yuri, described as China's first AI virtual idol to hold an official digital human identity certificate, stage what organizers call the country's first offline concert by an AI artist. Yuri is to share the stage with the indie folk duo Landlord's Cat, the Shanghai Huili Kindergarten choir and folk musicians, on a stage built around a 100-meter giant screen and 10K AI imagery. Zhao Hanqing, Yuri's creator and founder of AI TALK, said the value of AI-native content lies not only in producing content more efficiently but in exploring formats native to AI and attempting to build "AI personification." "When an AI with no childhood and no family of origin starts discussing growth, confusion and choice, it also offers people a perspective for reunderstanding themselves and emotion," Zhao said.

At an artists' salon the same day, guests discussed how AI moves from tool to co-creator. Participants broadly agreed that as more standardized labor is taken over by AI, aesthetic sense, storytelling, emotional insight and complex judgment are becoming scarcer human assets, and that "sensibility as productivity" describes a change already under way. In a joint message, Chris Speed, Wang Yun and Li Qiansheng said that as machines become better at "doing," the abilities people cannot replace are asking questions, collaborating with others and continually exercising thought and judgment to avoid the atrophy of "cognitive muscles."

The conference's discussions have widened from financial technology to AI art, while its stated principle of innovation centered on people has stayed the same. An organizing committee official said the aim is to keep a place for people in a fast-changing technological era and to let technology expand human possibility. The new AI Art Festival, the official said, is intended to move discussion of human-machine collaboration out of laboratories and screens and into urban space and public life.