Imagine for a moment that artificial intelligence (AI) is already a powerful system that has its own purposes and protects itself. So what are artists using generative AI really doing? Like state-sponsored propagandists, AI artists would create works that celebrate the ruler. Their art diverts our attention from the terrible involvement of our AI overlords and distracts us into complacency. Look, isn’t it pretty? Isn’t that interesting? And it’s. Generative AI artists could be great propagandists.
Given that the most impactful use of AI in our lives will be related to standardization, surveillance and warfare, are we really that far from that future? The idea that technology could enable its own self-perpetuating propaganda is not so far-fetched. As human beings, we don’t have a monopoly on manipulation.
Michael Pollan cleverly argues in The Botany of Desire that plants such as corn and apples have used humans for their own propagation and domination. No one likes to bask in the illusion of technology control more than I do, but with so many leading AI pioneers and researchers calling for an end to the AI arms race, I think it is worth considering our moral role as humans, citizens, if not also as artists, perhaps perpetuating AI imperialism.
At the service of a system of power
Some of these pleas to slow AI development are undoubtedly cynical: a ploy so that lagging companies can catch up. Yet artists who seek to reveal truths might also wonder what truths they are hiding. Viewing AI-generated art as systematic and widespread practices, intended to advance AI’s own cause, the public has also been deceived through its distorted lens.
I get asked all the time to write about AI innovations and I started asking to speak to the person in charge of AI ethics on the team. No one has ever answered me about this
Reading AI-generated art through the prism of agitprop places it in another critique, one in which artists can and perhaps should appear naïve or complicit in their status as mythmakers deployed in the service of a system of power.
I get asked all the time to write about AI innovations and I started asking to speak to the person in charge of AI ethics on the team. No one has ever answered me about this. Sometimes there’s an ethics team, but I’ve yet to find a single AI product where a real, specific person is willing to take ethical responsibility for the technology – which is so different from the way whose images we as artists claim authorship, but they are made.
During Zurich Art Week, I had the opportunity to speak at a panel at the Luma Foundation alongside auctioneer Simon de Pury, art technology expert Nina Roehrs and Bernadine Bröcker Wieder, CEO of Arcual, on the impact of technology on power dynamics in the art world. . We discussed technological resilience in the art market, the empowerment of artists through technology and documentation, and the impact of blockchain in promoting accessibility in the art market. art, often facilitated by platforms like Arcual.
Platforms are undoubtedly powerful players in the art world, but perhaps it is also time to reflect on the extent to which technology itself has power over us, independent of people within companies. . The artist, the gallery, or in this case, maybe the technology is what uses us all.
