FACING UP TO 'AI'

 

There is a lot of disquiet about the pros and cons of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and, specifically among artists, about ‘AI-generated art’, including strident protests that even the use of such a term is totally abhorrent! 

   

I am more ambiguous on the topic: partly because I have seen some highly original and inventive AI-imagery and because I think that, for millennia, art has always been subject to the vagaries of frauds and fakers as well as those who have a taken a broad perspective on such identifications as ‘after…’, ‘inspired by…’ and ‘in the style of…’

 

This liberality of accreditation can be seen in the output from the 'workshops' of the Old Masters; among those creating art with collage and photo-montage; and in Andy Warhol’s screen-prints featuring a ‘borrowed’ publicity-image of Marilyn Monroe from the 1953 film, Niagara, or that humdrum household staple, the Campbell’s Soup Can.

 

However, even I balked at finding an internet entry on Lewis Carroll featuring an AI likeness of the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass alongside genuine, well-attested photographic images of the man.

 

 

Arguably, it is the best of a less-than-brilliant bunch of imaginings which range from the patently risible to the truly creepy... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, again, I tell myself, the National Portrait Gallery in London contains a variety of artworks variously portraying the well-known features of, say, her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II, so what the heck? Does it actually matter?

 

Perhaps, in the end, it just comes down to being able to identify, ‘What’s What and What’s Not’, between artefact and artifice.

 

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‘So [Alice] got up, and held out her hand. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

 

‘“I shouldn't know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: “you're so exactly like other people.”

 

‘“The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

 

‘“That's just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has — the two eyes, so —” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance — or the mouth at the top — that would be some help.”

 

‘“It wouldn't look nice,” Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes, and said “Wait till you've tried.”’

 

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But we’d probably better not start a conversation on Pablo Picasso…