ABSTRACT by Luba Elliott
The popularity of AI as an artistic tool has exploded over the past few years. From its beginnings in 2015 with DeepDream and style transfer to GANs and DALL·E, AI art has long moved beyond technology circles into the public eye, straddling the worlds of media art, contemporary art and NFTs. The contemporary art world’s fascination with the social impact of technologies such as generative models, facial recognition and deep fakes has encouraged artists to explore AI critically as subject matter, while NFTs and text-to-image models have shifted the focus back to aesthetics. At the same time, the increasing presence of AI in society is having an impact on our perception and value of art, raising questions about the future of artistic labour and the potential of human-AI collaboration. This talk will give an overview of how AI is changing the art world, from artistic practices and market dynamics to new philosophical questions.