Visual Artistic Creation in the Face of the Challenges of Artificial Intelligence. Creative Automation and Ethical Questions

Abstract

This article discusses the emergence of generative models of image creation based on artificial intelligence (AI) and how they work by converting natural language descriptions (prompts) into images. Particular emphasis is placed on the ethical issues involved in the training processes of these systems. The risks that these generative models catalyse a devaluation of human creativity in various dimensions and that the generalisation of their use promotes an increasingly derivative and inauthentic visual culture are central to this article. Likewise, in the final part, we describe some avenues of current visual creation centred on the critical thematisation of artificial intelligence, which situate the relationship between art and AI not so much in the exploitation of the latter's creative (combinatory, derivative) capacity as in the poetic and critical enquiry into its effects on the production of our subjectivity.