AI in Art
The final class of Term 1 was on a subject that I personally love - AI.
I love AI because, like the beginning of the wireless telephone, and the beginning of dial-up internet, and the beginning of smartphones, and much more, my generation lived through the excitement (and fear, for the traditionalists) of each of these moments. I have always embraced new technology, but I fully understand why some people are terrified of change, especially a change as monumental as AI.
What is going to happen in Art?
This post is going to be a bit note-like, to take note of the key references Jonathan gave us:
“Community of Madness”
“You are such an interesting conversation”
>>> “Moscow to the End of the Line” (all of the voices, all of the madness, in one mind)
“AI can make art in the style of Dali, or Picasso, but not in the style of your unborn child, because there is no data…”
“The Narcissistic Insult” - It gives us an opportunity to redefine human creativity, and human intelligence. When there is AI “hallucinations”, are these a form of transcendence?
The Impossible Creatures children book
“Take a human by the wrist and you have in your hand a piece of never ending longing…”
The thing is, we use SO much AI with my students at CREA GENEVE, ESMOD, INSEEC, ESCE, Paris School of Luxury et al, as well as with my clients in luxury. So this subject is super interesting in art! I must admit though, when it comes to personal creativity, or artistic creativity, I do find myself on the more “traditional” side of the thought landscape. While I love AI, and I love using it as a tool, I would not consider AI-generated art (i.e. entirely generated from a short text prompt, not from a sketch or drawing, not from a poem or novel).
This is a problem I encountered recently, with an AI artist that was proposed to Milano Pride House as part of the art show I wish to create. I outsourced part of the curation to my agent, and his choice of artist is a photographer-turned-AI artist, whose recent body of work is AI-generated. This begs the question: Where should we draw the line between creativity, and outsourcing our creativity to AI?
Is a 100% AI-generated image still considered our artwork, as artists?
If the image is inspired by our work / illustrations / other input (other than a text prompt), is that an artwork?
If the text prompt is a poem, rather than just a description, does this add artistic value to the AI-generated artwork?
Do I have the answers? No. But I shall certainly update in a separate post for Milano Pride House!
For that, I definitely have answers.
