The Shady Light of Art Automation
It addresses the nuanced impact of AI on art for researchers and cultural critics, highlighting ideological concerns rather than technical advancements.
The paper examines how the underlying conceptual and ideological foundations of generative AI influence contemporary art and culture, critiquing the questionable ideas and values propagated from the tech industry.
Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) has entered the mainstream culture and become a subject of extensive academic investigation. However, the character and background of its impact on art require subtler scrutiny and more nuanced contextualization. This paper summarizes a broader study of the roles that AI's conceptual and ideological substrata play in influencing art notions. The focus is on divergent but coalescing and often questionable ideas, values, and political views that generative AI and other art-related AI technologies propagate from the computer science and AI/tech industry to the contemporary art and culture. The paper maps the main areas of this complex relationship and concisely critiques their key aspects.