Beyond the Hype: Creating from the Heart in the Age of AI

By Gregory Beylerian, Artist, Futurist, Speaker

Reflections from “Beyond the Hype: AI in the Real World,” presented by NEROUJ at Hero House @ HyeRise, Glendale, on Wednesday, November 11, 2026. Moderated by Diana Agdashian, with Garen Karaguezian, Armen Karaoghlanian, Mike Dermendjian, Esq., Gregory Beylerian and Mariam Harutyunyan.

 

 

Last night I sat on a panel with a lawyer, a pharmacist, a filmmaker, and a law firm operations leader, and we were asked the question so many people are carrying right now. With AI changing everything so fast, how can I feel secure in my profession?

I represented the creative voice in the room with Armen. AI has radically transformed the way I create, and it has not taken away the pure essence of the creative process. It has empowered my capability, and I do not say this lightly, by a hundred times.

The night I did not sleep

I have been thinking about this since the first day we had access to AI. I did not go to sleep that night. I still have that folder, more than a thousand images I created in those first hours, and that excitement is still with me today.

Since then I have made countless images, video and motion works, fully composed albums of music. I am making a Duduk house album right now and utilize Ai to help me run a very active studio on so many levels. This including showing AI plumbing issues and getting accurate steps to fix problems.

I also see the fear in creative spaces and in the community at large. My approach to life, rooted in my work with Fr. Vazken Movsesian and Epostle, is to create my life through the heart and not to be guided by fear. I have practiced this consciously since my early twenties.

Whenever I have applied myself with fear, it has been destructive. Whenever I have been able to shift the energy I am holding, which is essentially faith or trust, and relax myself to surrender, something else becomes possible. I allow myself to feel the guidance I call intuition, and that intuition can merge with AI as a tool.

A tool goes only as far as you unite with it

I had a chance to meet Quentin Tarantino and then learned about his creative process, his whole point was about communication. He does not know the mastery of set design, or how to run a cinematic camera, but he empowers himself with a great team and he learns how to communicate the vision.

AI can only go so far from me as I am able to unite with it. If I ask a mundane question, I will get a mundane answer back. But when I build a relationship of exploration and curiosity, my visions can go deeper and farther.

I have had dreams of walking in my own art exhibitions in the early 2000s that I could not realize, until the last three years, because AI is helping me facilitate the vision. Creativity is not only for artists. From a mechanic to a dentist, it is there in every aspect of work. AI helps facilitate that vision, but it does not replace it.

What this looks like in real life

Right now I am using AI to build and launch an app, develop marketing and promotion strategies, create ad’s, manage communications, the possibilities feel endless. At epostle.net for example, there are 6000 thousand web pages from a lifetime of Fr. Vazken’s writings and projects we have accomplished together which are now readable in three languages, English, Armenian, and Spanish. People searching in Armenian or Spanish are now finding those pages. We were paying a translator in Armenia to translate page after page, and it took forever.

That is our approach. We utilize AI as a tool to guide the vision, and we always make sure we are coming from the heart, not from fear. That determines whether it is going to be destructive or constructive.

It has also empowered me in very practical ways. I had a dispute with Google, and I did not hire a lawyer. Top lawyers I reached out to said they would not touch it, because it was Google. It took me six weeks, with AI walking me through every step and building letters. Google sent me an apology letter and said, we made a mistake. What an extraordinary outcome that I can say was truly only possible with the support of empowerment with properly guided and implemented AI.

Do not hand over your brain

None of this means handing over your thinking. A friend of mine moved out to Los Angeles and he just used GPS in his car. When I moved here, we had the printed Thomas Guide maps in every car, so you learn the streets. He lived with me for six months, then moved again, and did not realize he had moved two blocks from my house, because he only goes from point A to point B with GPS.

As Archbishop Derderian said at a conference at the Reclaim Conference last year, AI cannot replace the soul, the human dimension beyond the intellect. I found this to be a significant point and perhaps a profound pointer to the next phase of our human evolution with society. Every person has a path to explore. That journey, the hero’s journey as Joseph Campbell describes it, is about the courage to overcome fear and discover the treasure within. For me, that is the flowering of the heart.

It is like the man who was fixing horseshoes for horses who pulled buggies and then someone invented the car. I was trained to shoot with 35mm film in college, and one day digital photography was introduced. Shortly after, all the darkrooms started to disappear because photographers started switching to digital cameras. Everyone evolves to a new place, how graceful we experience the transition is personal.

How to begin, and where the magic is

Start small. Think about your biggest pain point, the repetitive task you wish someone would do for you, and start there. Download any AI app on your phone and start conversing with it. Give it good background, check its work, and build trust one small win at a time.

For me, it keeps returning to the seat of where the vision emanates from. I just had a conversation with Fr. Vazken about this. We are writing about presence, the seventh letter of the Armenian alphabet “to be”. That is the space. In Armenian, that word is Eh, the meaning Is multi dimensional: Է (Eh) means He Is. Being itself. God not as an idea, but as presence, in the present tense., I AM. It is the name we have been reclaiming at Epostle.

I feel we are coming to a place where it is going to be about presence. As we learn to live with these tools, AI is going to push us to become more present, because that is where the magic is in our humanity. Then it will just be a tool that helps us.

In the closing reflection that evening by Archbishop Derderian, we were asked, can AI be a language and a tool to speak to God? The answer he provided was sincere and simple. Yes, if we use it for the right reason, and do not become enslaved by it.

So I will leave you with the same invitation I left in Glendale. Do not go down the fear rabbit hole. Be curious. Be explorational. Relax, trust a little, and listen for the vision that is already in you. The tool will meet you there.

Gregory Beylerian is Founder of Beylerian Studio and Creative Director of Epostle.net. Through active meditation, he enters an intuitive creative state from which the work develops.

About the event

Beyond the Hype: AI in the Real World, presented by NEROUJ, hosted by Hero House by SmartGateVC at HyeRise, 326 Mira Loma Ave., Glendale, CA 91204, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 6:30 pm.

Moderator: Diana Agdashian, First-Year Associate, General Litigation. Panelists: Garen Karaguezian, Director of Pharmacy, Valkyrie Clinical Trials; Gregory Beylerian, Founder, Beylerian Studio and Creative Director, Epostle; Armen Karaoghlanian, Founder and CEO, Armenian Film Society; Mike Dermendjian, Esq., Partner, Guardian Legal Group, LLP; Mariam Harutyunyan, Operations Manager, KAASS LAW.