Can Artificial Intelligence Produce Art?

Is AI capable of making art? This is one of the most interesting questions of today.

In recent days, a virtual trend has emerged of converting personal and historical photos into drawings in the style of Studio Ghibli Japanese animation, a style renowned for the quality of its stories and whose main figure is the artist Hayao Miyazaki. However, this trend has generated numerous discussions about the future of artists, AI, art in general, and a series of related topics. But honestly, I haven't seen almost any intelligent commentary on the subject.

In fact, on the contrary, I have the impression that because contemporary man doesn't know what art is, what an artist is, what man is, what a machine is, as well as not knowing a number of other things, he has enormous difficulty in correctly dealing with this issue of "art" made by Artificial Intelligence. That's why, incidentally, perhaps only philosophers, like Aleksandr Dugin, have offered interesting interpretations of the phenomenon.

Let's begin by breaking down the issue into several layers:

The first directly concerns the possibility of AI producing art. It seems to me that the fundamental problem here is that most people simply don't know what a work of art is. That if a machine produces a "beautiful drawing," then it is "making art," right? In fact, art only makes sense in relation to the artist. And here, without intending to make a lengthy discussion of the "meaning of a work of art," it suffices to make a fairly direct point that a work of art is the result of an artist's effort to grasp an aspect of truth and unveil it, to uncover it, to bring it out of concealment. The artist reveals a piece of truth through the work of art.

But he doesn't do it like a carpenter producing a chair, or a weaver producing a shirt, or a potter producing a vase. The craftsman or artisan produces finished objects for human use. But the artwork doesn't "end" with the completion of the painting, with the last note included in the score, or with the last strike of the chisel on the marble, because the artwork is something that, when unveiled, continues to grow and flourish like a plant. The artist's relationship with the artwork is like that of a gardener with seeds hidden beneath the earth. Art is "shepherded" by the artist, and it flourishes in the eyes of the historically rooted community, because, as Ezra Pound said, "the artist is the antenna of the race."

A Bernini sculpture is fundamentally distinguished from a chair precisely because of this historical dimension that is pertinent to art, but not to artisanal production. The revelation of a glimpse of truth is not made for a masturbatory artist, but always for a people who contemplate the artwork and are able to grasp the truth through the mediation of the artwork and even grasp meanings and nuances that neither the artist sees nor even intended. And that's why art is alive, like a plant, and continues to bear fruit and flourish even after the artist is dead.

Could AI provide this kind of experience? We can immediately say no. Artificial Intelligence is an object among objects. It's a well-made object, but nothing more than an object. It is as incapable of grasping any aspect of truth as it is of situating itself historically within a people as part of an entrenched community. No one will be debating, 500 years later, the nuances, intentions, mysteries, and hidden symbolism of a painting produced by ChatGPT. No one will be debating whether ChatGPT, as an author of texts, reveals Catholic, pagan, or Gnostic influences (as, for example, we find ourselves debating about Tolkien). There is nothing being revealed there, nothing that can "flourish." It is like an automated factory, capable of producing finished things from pre-programmed algorithms and databases and nothing more. Even if you give the order “Create a painting in the style of Da Vinci, but depicting a modern woman,” the result will be merely derivative, superficial, and not a work of art. It will be amusing entertainment…that will be forgotten in a matter of days (certainly there are beautiful images produced by AI, but is there any that is memorable, that has made a deep impression on anyone? I haven't seen any yet, and I've been working with AI for years now).

AI is incapable of creating. Creation does not occur through the shuffling of numerical factors. This is a closed path, perpetually closed, for AI. It can never create because it can never be human.

In this sense, Dugin is right when he points out that AI does not possess Dasein – and here is the thread for the next reflection – but is hardly distinguishable from the man who lives inauthentically (and who, therefore, has closed himself off from the existential fullness of Dasein), in pure everyday life, almost like a machine.

I have the impression that for most people, replacing real artists with AI wouldn't make a difference (there are people who already want to see "AI-made" films) because most people simply aren't truly capable of contemplating a work of art – they've already become "NPCs," they're part of the Man-Machine automatons reproducing daily routines that are hardly distinguishable from AI (except for the potential to one day awaken). The flesh-and-blood automaton (a golem, therefore?) doesn't really see the difference between a cinematic work of art and the latest garbage serially vomited up by Hollywood. To avoid placing it in the inaccessible realm of "boring films," most wouldn't see much difference between Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and Wild Wild West.

Thus, the normalization of AI acceptance is understandable. Most people already consume "art" mass-produced by computers and flesh-and-blood automatons to a lower common denominator. This is the “art” produced by the Western music industry, this is the “art” produced by the major film studios. This is the norm, this is the dominant “art” to which we have been fully accustomed for at least 50 years. There is nothing there to contemplate, nor a contemplator, since the people no longer exist as such; they have been replaced by the masses.

Now, in what context does all this affect the artist? On the one hand, they say that only commercial artists will be threatened. On the other hand, they say that all artists (or most) will be replaced and that the future of art is Artificial Intelligence. The reality seems more mixed to me. If there is no longer a worthy contemplator, then no one can distinguish what is a true artist from what is a flesh-and-blood automaton producing images and sounds. So both Anitta's composers and true artists will, to some extent, be affected by AI.

A studio for which certain types of art are a means and not an end (think of the role of concept art in a video game studio) can simply dispense with artists and outsource the function to AI. Some will even risk outsourcing elements of the final product to AI, hoping that no one notices. One report claims that movie scripts are already being produced by AI. Well, they are as bad (or slightly worse) than those of commercial films from the 90s. It is important to remember, however, that true artists don't live by "masterpieces" alone. Every artist also produces commercially (and when they are really good, that doesn't make them any less of a work of art). Da Vinci worked for the Italian aristocracy. Avant-garde comic book artists also work for Marvel and DC. The narrowing of the professional artist's path will inevitably impact the ability of artists to produce disinterested works of art.

Finally, I will address what seems most disturbing to me in the whole issue: the enthusiasm for AI and the propagators of its "inevitability".

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