Art and AI

Written by: Judit Horváth, Aesthetician

Art is a constant experience.

Experience is an output and input, a continuous pulsation. A dialogue. AI cannot convey human experience because it has no experience, only data. 

A good piece of art always overrides previous experiences. It crosses and breaks the boundaries of experience, surpassing it. AI cannot penetrate the surface; it only varies what we have fed into it. It lacks depth because it only collects data but does not experience. It does not filter this data through the sieve of existence because it has no existence. If we try to create art with it, at best, it will result in a poorly executed style parody. It's like reciting memorized material without understanding. Just don't ask it about the essence, and don't respond to it meaningfully, because it will get confused, and what it produces will become increasingly irrelevant. It strives like a student who doesn't understand the subject matter during an oral exam. It won't end well. You cannot engage in a real dialogue with it. Dialogue is teaching and learning. Learning is teaching, and teaching is learning. The teacher cannot be replaced, and you cannot learn from AI, nor can AI teach on its own, because it does not connect. 

Perhaps the best example is the native language. Ideally, you learn words from your mother and father, but always through experiences. Each word is associated with a gesture, a smell, a sound, a time of day, a touch, an atmosphere, which are layered with new gestures, smells, sounds, times of day, touches, atmospheres throughout your life. This is unique, singular, and unrepeatable for everyone. No two people understand the same thing under a word, just as no two people see the same thing in a work of art.

The first thing that comes to mind when you see a 'work' created by AI is that it is controllable, mathematically describable. Art, however, is uncontrollable, unexpected, surprising, full of solutions; it aids because it carries understanding within itself. Art has no boundaries; a single work cannot be quantified or predicted because it is not a collection of data but an immeasurable accumulation of experiences in space and time, and there is no standardized unit of measurement for these experiences. How do you measure movement, scent, sound, time of day, touch, atmosphere? How do you measure shared experience? 

A work of art does not exist without interpretation. You can recognize AI-generated images at best, but you have no urge to interpret them; you only react to the surface, trying to decode what it wants to depict, but you don't seek content in it because it is obviously empty. From then on, why would it be interesting who or what it imitates or what the original might be? 

AI is incapable of creating something original because originality comes from within, and AI has no interior. It can only reflect what we project onto it. It shows everything through a glass, darkly, not face to face. Refer to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. 

Art is unpredictable. You never know where it will open up. To whom? When? Where? And again: To whom? When? Where? So, do not be afraid!