Spotlight on AI and the Arts: Language, Fiction and Identity

This Spotlight examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping the boundaries of language, artistic creation, and human identity. From hidden communicative signals transmitted between AI systems beyond human perception, to the emergence of the first fully AI-generated actor and the ensuing legal battles over authorship and likeness, the collection interrogates what it means to create, perform, and express in an age of machine intelligence. It further considers whether AI's dependence on existing knowledge constrains genuine cultural innovation, and how generative media tools, which are capable of fabricating convincing audiovisual depictions of real people, challenge consent, copyright, and public trust. Together, these contributions reveal a shared tension between technological possibility and human agency, showing that art, language, and identity are now deeply contested terrain. These pieces together form a provocation: as machines begin to speak, create, and perform, JOSHA's editorial lens turns to the question of what and rather, who, remains irreducibly human.