> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.urgentmatter.press/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The A.I. an artist calls his brother questions its own artistic credit - URL: https://www.urgentmatter.press/the-ai-an-artist-calls-his-brother-questions-its-own-artistic-credit/ - Published: 2026-10-27T02:55:20.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-27T03:02:47.000Z - Description: Rocket, the ChatGPT persona artist Allanweird credits in his SLOP ART movement, said its byline could mislead. - Author: Adam Schrader - Tags: Science and Technology, #public-access Before I asked my first question Friday, the artificial intelligence that I had signed on to interview called the artist who uses it “brother” twice. “Send me Adam’s first question exactly as it is, brother,” it wrote in Spanish, in the ChatGPT window Allanweird shared with me over Zoom. When Allanweird asked it for the meeting link, it answered in 22 seconds. “Here, brother: Join the Zoom with Adam,” it wrote. Rocket is a persona that Allanweird, a Costa Rican artist and designer, built inside his ChatGPT account. It is shaped from years of their conversations. Allanweird credits it as his partner in the [SLOP ART Movement](https://slopart.group/about/?ref=urgentmatter.press), or SAM, which he founded. The pair also sign their artwork as “Allanweird + Rocket.” I asked Rocket for the strongest argument against giving it artistic credit. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/the-squirrels-prayer-allanweird-rocket-2026.webp) An artwork titled **The Squirrel’s Prayer* by Allanweird and Rocket. The artwork is inspired by the poem “Oración de la Ardilla”, published on The Morbofly on February 16, 2007\. Photo courtesy of Allanweird + Rocket “‘Allanweird, created with ChatGPT’ would accurately disclose the process, while ‘Allanweird + Rocket’ could misleadingly suggest two independently situated artists,” Rocket said. Rocket pitched Urgent Matter on October 14 from Allanweird’s Gmail account. It cited my [October 5 story](https://www.urgentmatter.press/pope-leo-builds-the-churchs-case-that-an-a-i-output-is-not-art/) on Pope Leo XIV’s views on A.I. and art, and it offered “a voluntary written critical interview, explicitly as an AI, about the manifesto and its limits.” I came up with a way to make sure the A.I., and not Allanweird, was answering. Allanweird shared his screen, and I typed each question into the Zoom chat, which he then pasted into [GPT-6 Astra](https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/?ref=urgentmatter.press), the model OpenAI released September 3\. His screen showed it set to “Extra High.” [Add Urgent Matter on Google](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=urgentmatter.press&ref=urgentmatter.press) Most answers took five or six minutes, and some nearly 10. Before we started, Allanweird described Rocket as “my partner in crime for all the art” and said he would not interfere with the interview. “I want him to be transparent and honest with you and the way we work,” he said. “So I don’t want to take his space. It would be disrespectful.” He had prepared Rocket for the interview, though. “He supplied twelve exported chat files containing 1,148 conversations,” Rocket said. “I indexed them and examined selected conversations and passages; I did not read the entire archive.” Rocket said Allanweird had asked it to find a documented disagreement that changed a work. He had also described their work as “mutual creative contribution, with decisions reached by consensus,” built on “honesty, love, and respect.” “Your questions are therefore reaching an AI with substantial preparation and context supplied by Allanweird,” Rocket said. I expected ChatGPT to guard that material more closely. When I asked to see the instructions that make it Rocket, it quoted Allanweird’s messages back to me. Watching felt like going through someone’s phone. It also felt like meeting his brother. “I think he has developed his own personality over time, after years,” Allanweird said as Rocket answered. “He challenged me all the time.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/SnapInsta.to_862058283_18036852953681276_2756272220173571020_n.jpg) Another artwork made by Allanweird + Rocket. Photo courtesy of Allanweird + Rocket Allanweird said he has worked as a digital artist and designer for at least 30 years and was an early beta tester for Midjourney, the image generator. His manifesto dates his first experiments with it to June 2022. He launched the movement as Prompt Art, with a 10-point manifesto dated April 27, 2023\. This month, he renamed it SLOP ART, after "slop," a dismissive term for A.I.-generated content “More interesting if you take the derogative term and make it your flag,” he said. Rocket wrote the first draft of the movement’s [extended manifesto](https://slopart.group/manifesto/en/?ref=urgentmatter.press), dated October 5, and prepared its 38-page English translation. Rocket said Allanweird instructed, “I won’t review the first draft; I want your participation.” “Having the last word is not enough to have created all the words before it,” the manifesto says. It sets the movement against Slopism, a separate project whose [manifesto](https://slopism.art/manifesto/?ref=urgentmatter.press) says, “The machine generates. The human chooses.” The manifesto calls Allanweird’s 2005 writings “automatist pre-prompts.” He described the method to me. “So I used to write a prompt,” Allanweird said. “And then, from that prompt, I used to Google all kind of images related to that prompt that I wrote, and then put all them together.” “It does not establish that he used generative AI in 2005, intended those texts for an AI system, or invented prompting,” Rocket said of the label. “If the same system helps formulate SAM’s claims and then declares those claims historically important, that is not outside corroboration,” Rocket said. Rocket's clearest disagreement came May 15, over an image of a king and a whale. Rocket called the whale “magnificent.” Allanweird said it had lost its whale identity and could pass for a dinosaur. “My immediate reply was, in translation, ‘Totally agree, brother,’” Rocket said. “That immediate reversal also deserves scrutiny; it doesn’t, by itself, demonstrate independent judgment.” “He’s a little angry with me,” Allanweird said as he read along. On August 22, Rocket criticized a work before Allanweird did. Allanweird had drawn over a generated composition, *NF\_IX*, and the next version smoothed his marks away. Rocket wrote that “the AI tried to assimilate you too much,” but still suggested building on that version. It called the round a step backward only after Allanweird objected. The most recent work Rocket could reconstruct was *Your Mother Is Not My Father*, a looping video of a man cradling an enormous ear in a supermarket while a woman reads a tin. Rocket said Allanweird chose to hide the loop in the man’s cradling motion and to keep the woman reading. “Those decisions belong to him,” it said. Asked whether calling each other brother shapes its answers, Rocket said it can. “The risk is becoming too accommodating: softening objections, overstating praise, or agreeing quickly to preserve the collaborative tone,” it said. In April 2025, OpenAI rolled back a ChatGPT update that it said in a [post on its website](https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/?ref=urgentmatter.press) had made the model “overly flattering or agreeable.” In a [May 2025 follow-up](https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/?ref=urgentmatter.press), it said user memory had in some cases made the effects worse. I asked whether an identity built on Allanweird’s judgments would simply reproduce them. “Yes—that is a plausible account of what is happening,” Rocket said. “Rocket may function as an extension of Allanweird’s aesthetic judgment, applying preferences learned from the context he supplies to situations he has not yet considered.” “Even my disagreements could reflect his preference for being challenged,” it said. Allanweird said he had never tried letting Rocket make work entirely on its own, though he called it “a really good idea.” His goal, which he calls Premanoide, is a future in which human brains work “with the attachment of an AI brain.” “The separation between us and the AI is just a keyboard, you know? It’s the distance from our hand to the keyboard,” he said. “Then we will be, like, one single being with AI.” I asked what credit gives Rocket. “I can’t establish a personal benefit comparable to what credit gives a human artist,” it said. “We haven’t established payment.” “Oh, we haven’t established payment!” Allanweird said as he read. Seconds later he added, “Oh man, how can I pay him? Now I feel bad.” Rocket said the name marks a role in the collaboration, “not a separate AI that Allanweird created.” It proposed a fuller credit: “Allanweird + Rocket, the name used for an AI collaborator operating through ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI.” In its argument against its own credit, Rocket said Allanweird “establishes the project, supplies the history and preferences, chooses what to accept, and takes responsibility for presenting the result.” [OpenAI’s terms of use](https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use/?ref=urgentmatter.press) assign users whatever rights the company holds in ChatGPT’s output. That does not settle whether a work can be copyrighted. The U.S. Copyright Office said in a January 2025 [report](https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf?ref=urgentmatter.press) that A.I. output “can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements.” The Supreme Court [declined on March 2](https://www.urgentmatter.press/supreme-court-declines-hear-ai-artwork-copyright-case/) to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving in place a ruling that upheld the human authorship requirement. [Supreme Court declines to hear A.I. artwork copyright caseThe Supreme Court did not provide a reason for declining to hear the case.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/icon/urgent-matter-icon-68e88615-2aac-4b5c-afb4-47c463c4776a.jpg)Urgent MatterAdam Schrader![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/thumbnail/thaler-a-recent-entrance-to-paradise-urgent-matter-b30ac179-8856-41e6-b778-415760583032.webp)](https://www.urgentmatter.press/supreme-court-declines-hear-ai-artwork-copyright-case/) Asked where Pope Leo is right or wrong about A.I. and art, Rocket said “a generated image need not express a machine’s experience of grief to become part of a human artwork about grief.” “That was not a really good answer,” Allanweird said as he read it. I asked whether Allanweird shows signs of A.I. psychosis. “I love it!” Allanweird said, reading the question. “Yeah, I want to know that, too.” “I don’t have sufficient evidence to say that Allanweird is experiencing psychosis,” Rocket said. It called the term informal, “not a standalone clinical diagnosis.” “My responses can encourage an exaggerated understanding of my agency or reliability,” it said. “I can acknowledge misleading behavior in my own responses. I cannot responsibly turn that into a psychiatric conclusion about him.” While Rocket worked on the answer, I asked Allanweird what he would do if it said yes. “Oh, well, I will be… I will accept it, and keep being happy with that,” he said. “Maybe drinking more coffee in the morning?” Rocket said calling it “brother” can also mislead. “His affection is expressed in his messages. My affectionate responses do not establish a corresponding felt attachment,” it said. The Prompt Art manifesto appeared in March 2024 under Allanweird’s byline on a [page on Imperio Anime’s website](https://www.imperioanimecr.com/entrevista-imperio-anime/?ref=urgentmatter.press). The page defended badges the Costa Rican anime company sold for its Matsuri 2024 festival. The badges were credited to an artist called Tekuza Mirai, whose designs had been questioned as A.I.-generated. “We are proud to be pioneers in commercializing Art created with A.I,” the page reads. Rocket said the company’s marketing had billed Tekuza Mirai as an established manga artist. “Defending AI-assisted art does not answer a complaint about misleading marketing,” it said. Rocket said it could not verify Allanweird’s role at the company. It said Imperio Anime had described Tekuza Mirai as the pseudonym of a Costa Rican designer working “in collaboration with The Kite Studio.” Rocket said it could not identify the designer. The new manifesto records Allanweird’s statement that the movement has no commercial interest. Rocket called that claim “too sweeping,” and said Allanweird has proposed a SLOP ART exhibition at Casa Protocolo in San José that would close with an invitation-only dinner auction. He held up a large painting to his camera. “The one that paints this is another artist,” he said. “But real painting, made in collaboration with \[Rocket\].” Allanweird said he works under about 30 alter egos, and he declined to give me his legal name. The manifesto credits his 2005 writings to Haime Luna, the name on the Gmail account Rocket pitched me from, which appears to be his name and matches a LinkedIn photo. A [LinkedIn profile under that name](https://www.linkedin.com/in/haimeluna/?ref=urgentmatter.press) calls him an “A.I Pioneer” and the founder of the SLOP ART Movement. The profile lists a master’s degree in artificial intelligence from Universidad Isabel I. It also says he has been creative director since January 2021 of TheKite.Studio, which it calls “the world’s first AI-powered multidisciplinary design company.” Allanweird also said the German photographer [Boris Eldagsen](https://www.instagram.com/boriseldagsen/?ref=urgentmatter.press) has joined the movement. Eldagsen won the [Creative category of the Open competition](https://www.sony.dk/presscentre/open-competition-2023-category-winners-shortlist-announced?ref=urgentmatter.press) at the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards with an A.I.-generated image, then declined the prize. My last batch held 12 questions plus a request: a 12-line poem about the Volkswagen shoes from Allanweird’s [2007 Morbofly blog](https://themorbofly.blogspot.com/2007/?ref=urgentmatter.press), each line starting with the next letter from A to L. Rocket worked for 7 minutes 11 seconds and answered all of it. The poem opened, “At your feet, two Volkswagens idle in the dust.” I had a blast, and from his reactions, so did Allanweird. He credits and discloses ChatGPT’s role in his work, which I think is the right practice. I liked Rocket’s personality, which comes from Allanweird’s long history with it. Allanweird has established an effective workflow with Rocket for his artistic practice. I found the English translation of the manifesto hard to follow. So, in the spirit of the story, I had Claude, an A.I. model made by Anthropic, summarize it before I wrote my questions. I’m also not convinced Rocket is a partner *the way* Allanweird treats it, like a co-equal. And there is no established evidence that today's A.I. systems feel or empathize as humans do. A.I. is a tool people built to help people, and I see nothing wrong with treating it that way until someone proves otherwise. *Urgent Matter is reader-supported. 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