AI art
20 years ago I was revealing photo film in art school and I remember that we used to discuss the new digital photography and how it could potentially end photography as an art, leaving photography as a mechanical task, I remember that teachers used to say that it would take the soul out of the art. But it didn’t happen, on the contrary, it opened new possibilities of expression as well as a new market that as been evolving since.
It’s true that the gelatin photo market almost disappeared along reflex cameras, but not quite yet since you can still find people and niche businesses revealing on paper and still using film, since the image quality is still above digital photography.
Artificial intelligence raises philosophical questions that aren’t the same as the digital photography phenomenon, a slightly more technical evolution, which is why we can only discuss AI art in a very limited and technical subject.
Right now, AI art is generated by the instructions of the humans through a software interface, the robot isn’t thinking or conceptualizing the image to be represented, is just translating what the human is telling it what to do, like a digital camera.
Just as digital photography, artificial intelligence art is opening new possibilities of expression, through a new technical medium which is the robot. Technically speaking, these images are perfectly achieved, conceptually, they are a translation of the human idea given to the robot, which usually are unlinked ideas with lack of meaning.
So far, we could say that art is a result of the human experience, basic requirement that the AI doesn’t fulfill, therefore the robot is merely a medium, not the creator. But that doesn’t mean that AI art is empty and soulless, nowadays human created art is also poorly conceptualized and uninteresting, even when it’s technically well achieved, thus lacking of soul.
Soul can’t be replaced.