Is the generation of images with Artificial Intelligence Art?

Ernst Gombrich already said it in his immortal work History of art: Art does not exist with a capital letter, but artists. The eminent historian based his assertion on the fact that each era and each culture have had their own concept of what art is; not only that, but each individual also has his own ideas about it, so we can conclude that no, abstract art does not exist.

However, there is a common denominator that links the art made by all the communities in history: and it is precisely that, the fact of being exclusively linked to the human being. Until very recently it was unthinkable to conceive of art as something not linked to human nature.; you could discuss what its characteristics were, what was essential to be considered “art”, but it always arose from a human hand.

Currently, this idea has undergone a change, not without controversy, by the way. And it is that in recent years we have witnessed the rise of the so-called artificial intelligence and all that this entails: from greatly facilitate the development of our daily life to generate works that seek to emulate the art that has been made during millennia. The inevitable question is:

Is AI Imaging Really Art? This is the topic that we will delve into throughout the article.

Can AI image creation be called art?

If art is linked to human expression, we can impulsively affirm that no, that this type of "creation" cannot be called art. But first, let's define a bit what artificial intelligence (AI) consists of and the "art" that develops through it.

Artificial intelligence and the GAN

Artificial intelligence or AI (AI) is a set of technological systems and machines that aim to emulate the processes followed by the human brain, with the aim of facilitating the work. At least, this would be its definition in its beginnings, because currently the possibilities of action of artificial intelligence have been extended to unsuspected limits.

Specifically, AI has multiplied its branches towards the field of art. In this, the invention, in June 2014, of the system of Antagonistic generative network technology (GAN for its acronym in English: Generative Adversarial Network). Those responsible for the invention were the computer scientist Ian Goodfellow and his team, who devised a system algorithm organized around two antagonistic neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. These two networks compensate each other: while the generator creates images from a extensive database, the discriminator “validates” the creations through a process of ID.

This revolutionary technique allowed the French artist collective Obvious to generate the first "work of art" made with artificial intelligence. It is the famous painting Edmond De Belamy which, by the way, owes its name to the surname of one of the creators of the GAN technique, since good friend in French it can be translated as "good friend", more or less the same as Goodfellow.

The work was auctioned in Christie's in October 2018 and sold for a whopping $432,500, even more impressive considering initial appraisals put it at just $10,000.

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A new artistic reality?

He Edmond De Belamy of Obvious It is by no means a masterpiece made with this technology. Since its appearance up to the present time, many more images have been generated with the GAN technique that have turned out to be much more convincing. In any case, the real importance of belamy is that, for the first time in history, placed a work created with artificial intelligence in a prestigious auction house and, in addition, multiplied its starting price. This makes us wonder: is artistic reality changing? Is the future of art inevitably linked to this type of creation?

It is undeniable that artificial intelligence has greatly enriched movies, advertising and video games, but this technology entails some dangers that it is necessary to be aware of. It is very likely that you have heard of the deepfakes (literally, deep, grandiose falsehoods), in which known people appear performing actions that they have never actually performed. in this kind of fakes, appears, for example, a perfectly recognizable actor or singer designed through artificial intelligence.

Nowadays, these types of techniques are still in full development and it is relatively easy to discover the deception, but what will happen when technology improves in such a way that it is impossible to tell the truth from the lie?

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The "mechanical" art

But, ethical debates aside, let's return to the basis of this article, which is to consider whether or not images created with artificial intelligence are art. It is clear that the fact that this type of creation is slowly becoming popular does not justify its appreciation as artistic manifestations. We have already commented that, for a work to be considered “art”, it is necessary that it be made by a human mind. It is true that behind artificial intelligence there are human beings. But, ultimately, who generates this type of creation, through algorithms, is the machine, so it is risky to call this type of object "works of art."

In general, it is considered that the artist must "take out" what beats inside him; that is, that his work is an expression of his soul. However, this statement also needs some nuances, since not in all times or in all cultures art was something inherent to the "soul". In it RomanesqueFor example, painters and sculptors were mere artisans, who limited themselves to reproducing what was asked of them and for what they were paid. It was difficult for a Romanesque artist to put all his expression into a work, since each of the motifs that he had to capture were duly codified.

In other words, he had clear instructions on what to paint or sculpt and how to do it. This is not to say, of course, that a certain freedom did not exist, but we must not look at the art of the entire history of humanity with the eyes of the 19th century, which is precisely the century in which the figure of the artist began to be valued as someone who expresses what "inhabits his soul".

That is, for many centuries, art has been something merely "mechanical", comparable to the work of other craftsmen. Why not consider then art what the machines of our time do?

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conclusions

We have analyzed how, through history, the concept of "art" has changed, and that it was not always the expressive creation, born "from within", that we still have today.

There were historical moments in which art and artists were mere artisans, that we could equate, saving the distances of course, to "machines" that were limited to doing what they were told asked.

However, To what extent can a human being disassociate himself from his inner self, from his beliefs, from his feelings? A person is not a machine, so we will always find pieces of that internal and genuinely human feeling in works of art. Something that a machine, at least for the moment, cannot do.

Is art, then, what is created with artificial intelligence? From my point of view, no. For the simple reason that “art”, despite resisting a specific definition, is closely and inseparably linked to the human being. And a machine is not a human being, and we hope it never will be.