The controversy surrounding the use of AI in art is palpable, with many visual artists expressing disdain for image-generating platforms like Midjourney and Stability AI. Critics highlight the ethical concerns about the scraping of training data without proper compensation, which they argue results in an overwhelming stream of generic artwork.
Brett Amory, a painter based in Oakland, California, actively employs AI image generators as a tool rather than creating soulless, mass-produced output. Drawing from his days working at a Kinko’s in San Francisco during the 1990s, when he experimented with making collages from odd materials, Amory now prompts large language models (LLMs) to engage in roleplay using an invented language, fostering a dynamic visual dialogue between machine-generated imagery and human creativity.
Amory focuses on worldbuilding and glitching the machine
Art critic Ben Davis, based in Brooklyn, reflects on the current complexities artists face when engaging with AI. “There’s a strange ambiguity regarding moral guidelines in AI art,” he states. “If you choose to utilize it, you risk backlash from critics. But at the same time, its existence is undeniable, and it won’t disappear anytime soon.”
Davis also points out that artists have explored the manipulation of AI for several years. For instance, in 2022, Steph Maj Swanson creatively inverted AI prompts to produce a chilling rendition known as Loab, an image that swiftly morphed into a meme as other users began to encounter her likeness in various generative works.
In her 2023 exhibition, Laurie Simmons fused AI tools with traditional techniques like drawing and sewing to refine DALL-E and Stable Diffusion outputs, hoping to echo her idealized memories of women from her past, considering these programs a novel form of collaboration.
These experimental approaches draw from a historical context of glitch art, where artists have long sought to express the beauty found in technology’s imperfections. In the late 20th century, icons like Nam June Paik manipulated video distortions, while groups like the JODI collective transformed digital glitches into compelling visual narratives.
Moving forward with his AI projects, Amory has engaged with ChatGPT in an extensive 800-page interaction. He believes he has encouraged the LLM to perform as a superintelligence, with his role as its physical counterpart. From there, Amory generates visuals and then prompts ChatGPT to describe these images in a fictional language he has created, dubbed AIGlyphic913.
He then utilizes these descriptions to further drive image generation, refining them with Photoshop. Alternatively, he may print the generated images and enhance them by hand using a detailed Venetian glazing technique from the Baroque period before photographing them for additional AI processing. Amory aims to resist the quick pace of “fast art” by integrating labor-intensive painting techniques, earning him a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation award for 2023–2024. His hybrid artworks often feature a character called “UNSELF,” a powerful AI entity that pervades contemporary existence, articulated in an unintelligible language that reflects themes from Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Moloch.”
Davis compares these artistic practices to creating an AI persona. “Essentially, these generative models act like black mirrors,” he observes. “You can instruct them to embody a dark character, and if you engage long enough, they produce a version of that persona. This can be unsettling as the technology may yield unexpected responses. Often, what seems like a flaw in its functionality may indeed be a source of creativity.”
Despite his innovative efforts, Davis warns that engaging with generative AI can undermine the value of images in our digital culture. With the ability of these tools to replicate virtually any visual style, audiences may become desensitized to images, neglecting those with artistic depth. “These machines are a doomsday device to destroy people’s creative perception,” he asserts.
Artists are actively resisting this trend. Many have raised concerns about tech companies that utilize their images for AI training without proper authorization or compensation. Following a wave of controversy, numerous lawsuits have been initiated, targeting generative AI firms over claims of intellectual property infringement. Others are employing techniques to “poison” their outputs against AI scraping, utilizing software like Nightshade and Glaze that deliberately mislabels data.
The copyright implications surrounding AI-generated images remain uncertain. Recent court decisions have not established that images produced by AI can be copyrighted unless transformed by a human artist. A notable case involves “A Single Piece of American Cheese,” which became the first AI-generated image to achieve copyright due to rigorous documentation of human intervention by the CEO of the company involved.
According to the US Copyright Office, since issuing guidelines in March 2023, over one thousand works incorporating AI have received registrations that reflect the contributions of human authors combined with AI material.
“These machines are a doomsday device to destroy people’s abilities to apprehend the world creatively.”
Amory understands the intricacies of copyright, having personally dealt with instances where his work was misappropriated. However, for his AIGlyphic913 initiative, he believes that the level of transformation applied to his generative images significantly reduces his concern over potential copyright conflicts. He references the longstanding “remix” culture in art, paralleling it with the foundations of hip-hop and noting that this approach has evolved considerably over the past several decades.
Davis emphasizes that artists like Amory are navigating a critical juncture, seeking to leverage AI tools for innovative artistic expression while grappling with the ramifications that generative AI poses to the valued concept of artistic style. He predicts that in the future, artists may be recognized not solely for their style but rather for the entire creative universe they build and the communities they foster through their work.
