Art produced by generative AI

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This is where I stand on arts produced ‘thethingwedontsaythenameof’ i.e. (learning models and associated fauna). (Part 2).

In Valley crosser science I discussed scientific research produce by AI models. Here I describe the artistic counterpart: how I feel about AI driven art.

Arts

Here I am speaking as an artist. To me, an artistic piece is something that moves me. It gets me out of despair, loneliness, and confusion. It provides comfort, hope, and inspiration.

(Actually, speaking as a climber, art does also provide warmth and an unexpected spurt of energy in the freezing cold Himalaya. When you thought you were spent, and no longer had it in you to continue, art can extract from somewhere inside of us the ability to carry on and make our way back to your loved ones.)

Now, whether this piece of art, that saved me from despair, or even saved my life, was produced by: 

1. a bot, 

2. a lettuce, 

3. a galaxy, or, 

4. a human, 

is a philosophical discussion which we (pesky physicists) call second order in perturbation theory. 

Philosophical in the following sense: first I want to be saved by art, from whatever depths I was in. *Then*, with my life saved, I can wonder whether such art was produced by X, Y or Z.  

Of course this does not address the very serious concerns of copyright and artist protection. But it has provided me with some clarity in questions of generated art that I have been agonising with. 

It is not much at all, but it has helped organise my thinking, and what’s more has been strongly enabled by discussions in a protected multidisciplinary human environment of trust facilitated by O’Reilly, Digital Science, Nature, and Google. All mistakes are my own!