Project intro

This project is a set of interconnected essays about our ideas about artificial intelligence and how they intersect with our ideas about art and art making. When I started, there were many essays about those things already, and that count has since exploded. I certainly haven’t read all of them, but here are [a few very good ones] that I have found useful. As much as I can, I have tried to find where the ideas and terms we use confine us in the popular discussion about AI and art. Rather than directly critiquing specific arguments, these essays suggest ways to expand or complicate them. Sometimes we are confined by the idea that what we are saying is new, so in those cases I have tried to bring in relevant historical examples of existing art and art theory. This project is perhaps more about how we talk about art and AI more than either of those topics themselves, so even if I haven’t said anything new here, I have attempted to say it in a straightforward way and I have tried to make it easy to digest and share sections without having to absorb the whole thing.

If you prefer to read longer essays that build on each other, [here]’s a suggested path through this branching collection.

If you’d rather start with small pieces and bounce around, start with the Speedbumps section.

Ideas that I address

• Being an artist
• [[ Two ways to talk about art | Talking about art ]]
• [[ Handmade images print version |Images made by humans ]]
• <a class=’internal-link’ href=’/Nodes/Art%20AI%20Can’t%20Make%20Yet’>Art AI Can’t Make Yet</a>

Speedbumps

• Image generators democratize the production of art, not the making of art.
• Machines do not look
• Machines have no narratives
• This art is made out of pixels
• <a class=’internal-link’ href=’/Speedbumps/A%20lot%20of%20art%20can’t%20be%20reverse-engineered’>A lot of art can’t be reverse-engineered</a>
• Artists generally do not work from prompts
• There can be meaning in originality beyond novelty
• Machines do not plagiarize, people do
• Calling something art has economic consequences
• The market sees a source of profit in the effort required to become and remain an artist
• Debates about art are also useful to the people who own the platforms
• Art is not lossless compression of information
• Refusing to Do Theory is a political act
• AI Art is social art

The project is ongoing, so this isn’t a complete list.

Sometime at the start of this recent wave of talk of “AI Art” Maggie Appleton prompted the world to send her the John Berger of AI Art. I am certainly not that person, but I have had a sort of invisible “What Would John Berger Say?” sign flashing in my mind for decades, so I have tried, as always, to follow that prompt the best I can.