Artificial Intelligence Generated Art Imitation and the Art World: Implications and Further Questions

• Published in: Boletin de Arte no. 44; pp. 313 - 316
• Main Author: Gross, Eduard-Claudiu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malaga Universidad de Malaga, Departamento de Historia del Arte 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Creativity; Digital art; Generated Art; Generative artificial intelligence; Imitation Art; Machine learning; Pablo Picasso; Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973); Visual arts
• ISSN: 0211-8483; 2695-415X; 2695-415X
• DOI: 10.24310/ba.44.2023.15972

Leaving something represents the unanimous desire of people, whether it is a work of art, a composition that stirs emotion within the listener, or maybe just the name carved into tree bark. In the case of artists such as Pablo Picasso, there remain a considerable number of artworks, from various areas of art, capturing all the changes through which his art evolved. In addition to an impressive legacy, these artworks represent data and patterns that can be learned by a machine learning program. This paper aims to use the current capabilities of artificial intelligence to generate some text prompts and then transform them into artworks inspired by Pablo Picasso, subsequently identifying common elements in Picasso’s original work. In a 2002 article, long before the emergence of programs like Midjourney and Dall-E 2, Harold Cohen talks about his program called AARON, created to generate art in real-time. He addresses issues related to creativity in the context of generated art.In Cohen’s view, creativity involves a constant change in artistic expression, giving the example of Mozart and Matisse, who had a consistent style throughout their lives but still saw modifications such as the addition of new elements in their artworks (Cohen, 2002: 59). The fundamental way in which the AARON program is different from contemporary programs that generate art is that Cohen did not use his program to generate art that imitates the style of other painters, but rather trained his program after his style, consisting of an artist-program collaboration that lasted approximately 40 years (Garcia, 2019). Certainly, current models also allow for training on one’s artworks, but their imitative capacity should not be ignored and is therefore a worthy subject of investigation.