Mingde “MT” Zeng

Mingde “MT” Zeng is a Chinese-Canadian artist and open-source AI engineer based in Toronto. His photography stays close to real human life: the migration that brought him from China to Canada as a child, public protest and bodily autonomy, the games of his hometown childhood, and the brief contact between strangers in a crowd. This work has been exhibited at the CONTACT Photography Festival, the 500px Visual Festival, and San Sheng Art Space, and recognized by the International Photography Awards, the Muse Photography Awards, and the 500px Best 10 Grand Award. What occupies him now is how fast AI is changing what human work is worth, and what this technology should be used for. His recent installations and writing examine what happens to images, authorship, and truth once a machine can generate them on demand, an inquiry he set out in June 2026 as the concept of “the semanticization of photography” in Chinese Photography Journal. As an engineer he builds toward the answer he believes in: using AI to put knowledge and ability that once demanded deep expertise into ordinary people's hands. His latest project, Genomi, lets anyone read and understand their own DNA, work that used to require a lab and a genetics degree, and his open-source projects have together earned more than 5,000 GitHub stars.

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