As executive director of Make Santa Fe, I get to participate in fantastic conversations and thought explorations. Today, on our member Slack channel, a member raised the question, “Does AI create art?” or “Can art be attributed to an AI?” Here is my answer.
I think it’s pretty clear how we draw the line; It comes down to the moment of inspiration. Describing inspiration has, historically, been fickle. In the past, artists blamed gods and deities for inspiration. The Greeks blamed the Muses, for example. Since the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, artists believed it came from the ego. Now, we think that it’s directly tied to consciousness. The debate of where inspiration comes from still exists. The leading theories of inspiration and consciousness were born in the ’60s and ‘70s (no doubt psychedelics played a role). It boils down to being connected to humanity in many ways.
This is where it gets weird… the current leading theory is this: Researchers believe there is a phenomenon called the Noosphere, which is the next step in human evolution, similar to the geosphere (the earth) and the biosphere (humans and active life). The internet is often used as an example of what the Noosphere is… an organism connecting the whole biosphere…. the singularity. AI is part of this network; it’s like the glue, not an acting entity, but a tool our consciousness has to connect with others’ consciousness. Have I lost you yet? It gets weird… and this is coming from actual peer-reviewed science.
When we apply the question “Where does inspiration come from?” to this model of thinking (which I believe is at the heart of artistic intent, attribution, and creation), the answer to where inspiration comes from becomes clear. It comes from the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and everything acting upon the artist. Interestingly, AI is part of this zeitgeist but cannot consume it… it’s a by-product of the zeitgeist, a tool used to read it. To find inspiration and create art, all one needs to do is read the zeitgeist.
Reading the zeitgeist (what I call “joining the conversation”) requires actions (physical and mental) that AI cannot do (yet): Welcoming serendipity, mastering craft, practicing humility and gratitude, being in and around the biosphere and the geosphere, among other things. We use AI to read the zeitgeist, but AI cannot do it by itself. (These researchers believe it might be able to around 2045; this is when they predict we’ll have created a new life form, but we haven’t done it yet).
For example, does an elephant create art? It depends on whether it’s listening to the world around it or not. I think it probably does. Does AI create art? No, because it cannot interact with the zeitgeist; it’s an extension of us; AI is a tool for artists, not the artist itself.