What Can A.I. Art Teach Us About the Real Thing? — from newyorker.com by Adam Gopnik; with thanks to Mrs. Julie Bender for this resource
The range and ease of pictorial invention offered by A.I. image generation are startling.
Excerpts:
The dall-e 2 system, by setting images free from neat, argumentative intentions, reducing them to responses to “prompts,” reminds us that pictures exist in a different world of meaning from prose.
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And the power of images lies less in their arguments than in their ambiguities. That’s why the images that dall-e 2 makes are far more interesting than the texts that A.I. chatbots make. To be persuasive, a text demands a point; in contrast, looking at pictures, we can be fascinated by atmospheres and uncertainties.
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One of the things that thinking machines have traditionally done is sharpen our thoughts about our own thinking.
And, so, “A Havanese at six pm on an East Coast beach in the style of a Winslow Homer watercolor”:
Art work by DALL-E 2 / Courtesy OpenAI
It is, as simple appreciation used to say, almost like being there, almost like her being there. Our means in art are mixed, but our motives are nearly always memorial. We want to keep time from passing and our loves alive. The mechanical collision of kinds first startles our eyes and then softens our hearts. It’s the secret system of art.