Discussion
A thread of some additional thoughts on generative AI and art:
Part of what I enjoy about art is the intentionality of it. The knowledge that another human did this on purpose. It's not just the self-contained experience of me, in my own mind, looking at something beautiful (or ugly or horrifying or...), it's an invitation to enter the mind of another human.
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I've said before that the work is the art and the artifact is just the byproduct, and maybe this is an elaboration of that idea. The artifact is not just evidence of the art, it is an invitation into that art, an invitation in to the mind that created it. A rich and rewarding experience of finding yourself swimming in the thoughts of another.
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And so I feel extremely confident in saying: AI cannot create art, because there is no mind there to be invited into. There's no decider behind the choices, there's no particular reason things are this way and not that way. It might as well all be static. While AI may be able to create a (bad) *product*, it can never create art.
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"Nope" is one of my favorite movies because you could not find a single frame of it that was not *intentional*. Every detail of that movie is on purpose. Everything is this way and not that way because the people making it *meant* for it to be that way. And so when I watch it, I get the intense pleasure of entering into the minds of the people that made it, of imagining the reasons behind the choices, the meaning behind the imagery and how all of it relates to my own mind.
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