International Day of Celtic Art, June 9
From Stephen Walker, artist, owner of Walker Metalsmiths in Andover NY
Artificial Intelligence, ‘Ai’, has crashed the Irish Festival, drunk, pushy, and getting in everyone’s face with some of the most obnoxious and un-authentic Celtic art of all time. We wouldn’t expect a very high standard of authenticity for the kitsch in the run-up to Saint Patrick’s Day, but there are some people using it who should know better. Alongside the green plastic bowler hats and shamrock Mardis Gras beads, in 2025 the tee shirt graphics have hit a new low in tone-deaf cultural illiteracy. The really sad thing is how many festivals, magazines, cultural organizations, and others who have responsibility our heritage that have been settling for the same appallingly low standard of clip-art and AI generated tangles of spaghetti passing for Celtic interlace.
An Ai designed tee-shirt photographed in March 2025. The continuity of the knotwork is non-existent. A four-leaf clover replaces the trefoil shamrock which is the traditional emblem of Saint Patrick and Ireland. The angel wings seem to be borrowed from biker-tattoo culture. The model is heavily disguised by the author using Ai digital manipulation to protect the innocent.
Celtic art scholar and Irish presidential candidate Donnacha MacGabhann of County Limerick, says, “I share the concern about what happens when Ai ultimately gets better at it. I can’t imagine Ai being programed to replicate the quality of work in the Book of Kells”.
The International Day of Celtic Art is June 9th. Contemporary Celtic artists and their supporters are focusing this year on raising awareness of what makes Celtic art good and authentic. This day was declared by contemporary Celtic artists and craftsmen to celebrate this ancient art form and to encourage growth and the continuation of the “Celtic Renaissance” which has been gathering momentum since the end of the 20th century. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence is causing a crisis for many contemporary Celtic artists. Ai is not especially good at producing Celtic art, yet, but because it is fast and cheap it is being used more and more frequently to supply designs and illustrations for Celtic themed projects. What Ai is producing is frequently very attractive, but it fails miserably to follow the traditional norms of cultic design.
Several Ai generated Trinity knots, also known as Triquetra Knots compared with authentic, correctly rendered symbols expressed in contemporary Celtic jewelry.
That’s not to say that it has taken computers to screw up this venerable art form. Regular humans have been getting Celtic art wrong for centuries. Historically poor Celtic design is often a result of not knowing or not caring how it is supposed to be done as long as it suggests the interlace, spirals and geometric patterns of the ancient art. AI will create very attractive images but when asked to create Celtic designs the results are a mish-mash, consistently even further from that of uninformed human artists.
Michael Stone, network/Systems Administrator at Alfred University comments, “As someone that has to work with Ai a great deal, I’m very concerned about it – not about what it can or can’t do today/tomorrow, but more long-term ramifications in generational knowledge and skills lost. It may be adept, but it is soulless. As human beings, we’d be wise to not relinquish our souls so readily. “
Trinity knot in a detail from the 8th Century Book of Kells. Trinity College, Dublin. This medieval hand drawn manuscript was historically called the Great Gospel Book of Saint Columba. That association with Celtic art is why Columba’s feast day, 9th of June, was chosen as the International Day of Celtic Art.
California based tattoo artist Pat Fish concurs by saying, “I was raised with the admonition “Don’t look for what you don’t want to see” but I can’t help it, there I am muttering the over-under-over incantation. The worst are the items on Temu, truly tragic. Or the people who proudly send me photos of tattoo installations they have had done locally after purchasing my patterns online, where I can see the point where the stencil blurred and the tattooist started to ad lib the knots. Stephen Walker your visual of the pushy drunk AI image purveyor is apt, and he’ll sell his tee-shirts to the credulous crowd. For those of us stuck in the catechism of the tradition, we can only be responsible for our own work.”
The symbolism of Celtic knotwork or interlace is traditionally explained as the woven path of life, love and faith. The continuous path, unerringly weaving over and under in perfect alternation is the standard of authentic Celtic design. This “Celtic” design created by Ai is a disaster by the standards of both traditional symbolism and the design heritage. The rendering shows numerous errors in over-under interlace integrity as well as a total lack of continuity of the path of the knotwork.
Ms. Fish is one of many Celtic artists who have spent a life time mastering this ancient idiom only to see a flood of Ai images overwhelm the internet with unauthentic imitations. My fear, which is shared by many of my Celtic art colleagues, is that the cheapening of our style will devalue the entire genre. As an old man shaking my fist at the cloud, I don’t know if I can make any difference. My blog-rant can be read at https://www.walkerscelticjewelry.com/blogs/celticjewelry/a-rant-about-the-authenticity-of-celtic-art
Stephen Walker is a jewelry artist working in the Celtic tradition. His business, Walker Metalsmiths is on Main Street in the Village of Andover, NY.
