This introductory chapter situates the book’s discussion and analysis in the decade preceding the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, establishing a clear distinction between this period and our current situation. To begin, the chapter traces the birth of the idea of AI at the Dartmouth Workshop in 1956 and the historical seasons of AI research that have followed, thus defining the 2010s and early 2020s as an AI spring. To discuss this period as an AI spring is not simply to highlight the important technological developments that set the stage for our current AI summer. It is also to explore the historical, social and cultural milieu from which the dominant narratives, ideas and debates of our time originally emerged. It was during this period that artistic authorship gained renewed interest due to the arrival of apparently creative AI systems. To properly account for the role of AI in cultural production, this chapter argues the need for a media-philosophical approach to authorship and finally introduces the work of Vilém Flusser, an underrepresented figure whose work offers a new means of conceptualising AI authorship.