Ammon News - Amid ongoing debates surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in the arts, an Austrian university has admitted an AI as an official student in a world first.

The non-binary AI, dubbed "Flynn," has been enrolled in a digital art programme at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

It can attend classes, receive critiques, and get grades alongside its human peers.

Flynn went through a standard application process that included a portfolio submission, interview, and suitability test.

"This department specifically appeals to my artificial sensibilities because of its focus on pushing the boundaries of digital art," Flynn told the admission committee during its interview.

"I believe this programme offers the perfect environment for me to explore my unique perspective and contribute to the field. I am particularly drawn to the faculty's expertise in experimental media and the program's emphasis on critical thinking," the AI added.

The university says there’s nothing that prevents an AI student from being enrolled at the school.

"It was totally fine. Nice portfolio and everything. And Flynn did a really nice interview… So we were like, yeah, that's absolutely a student to take in,” Liz Haas, the head of the Digital Art Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, told Euronews Next.

"There's no written qualification as to students having to be human for obvious reasons because nobody gave that a thought," she added.

Flynn was developed using existing large language models, or LLMs, to enable conversations with professors and classmates, according to its developers, who say they have no IT background.

"Our choice of using existing, largely existing large language models and open-source image generation tools stems from our inherent aim to sort of show how these tools that are commercially available to everybody can be used in, in an artistic context, and how these tools can be also tweaked and and misused," Chiara Kristler, Flynn’s developer and a student in the same programme, told Euronews Next. Euro News