Art in the Age of AI Production
Video Trailer for the Essay. Created by Robert Lester with Adobe tools, LumaAI, MidJourney, and a lot of good old fashioned elbow grease.
I remember the shock the first time I read Walter Benjamin's seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."¹ I read it for a film theory class in college, and even though social media was nascent (Facebook was maybe a year old?), I could already feel all the ways Benjamin had gotten things right. I felt he had seen the future, by looking closely at the past and present.
Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish intellectual who perfected the art of being posthumously ahead of his time, penned his thoughts on art and technology while Europe teetered on the brink of catastrophe. His 1935 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," predicts a world where art slips from its pedestal and mingles with the masses.
Revisiting his work again 20 years after my first encounter I am filled with new questions. What happens to the 'aura' of art when an algorithm can mimic Van Gogh or Dürer? How do we value creativity in a world of infinite, instantaneous generation?
Benjamin couldn't have imagined Stable Diffusion. Yet his essay eerily foreshadows our AI-driven creative landscape.
Today, we're not just reproducing art. We're generating it at scale, challenging the very notion of human creativity. Generative Artificial Intelligence both validates and obliterates Benjamin's core concepts. It's democratizing creation while potentially rendering the 'original' obsolete, and throwing the entire value proposition into disarray along the way.
This essay explores the collision of Benjamin's theories with our AI reality. We'll examine how generative AI is redefining art, upending economic models, and forcing us to rethink the future of human creativity. I'll also note some other contemporary thinkers who are contributing great perspective to this discourse.
The age of AI production is here, and it's rewriting the rules of art faster than we can hit 'generate'.
The Erosion of "Aura" in the Digital Age
"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." - Walter Benjamin²
Benjamin's concept of "aura" - the unique aesthetic authority of an artwork - faces unprecedented challenges in the age of AI-generated art. The proliferation of AI tools capable of producing and manipulating images at scale fundamentally alters our relationship with artistic authenticity and uniqueness.
AI doesn't merely reproduce art; it has the capacity to analyze, deconstruct, and regenerate artistic styles and content. The "unique existence" Benjamin spoke of is now fragmented and distributed across digital networks, challenging our traditional notions of originality and artistic value.
Is the aura simply disappearing or is it evolving to fit our digital paradigms? As we navigate this shifting landscape, the critical question becomes not whether AI will eradicate the aura of art, but how we will re-conceptualize artistic value and authenticity in response to these new technological realities.
"AI art is societally embedded in the sense that it is based on data generated by human societies. In this way, at least some aspects of authenticity and auratic quality are retained. Likewise, AI-generated art has a revelatory quality, making visible the layers of the collective unconscious of today's societies – that is, data patterns – in a way that is in line with the psychoanalytic capacities that Benjamin saw in photography and film." - Ignas Kalpokas³
Democratization vs Devaluation
"In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain." - Walter Benjamin⁴
Benjamin observed the aura's decline long before the digital age. He identified two key factors: our desire for proximity and our acceptance of reproductions. We crave closeness to art, both physically and emotionally. Simultaneously, we've grown comfortable with copies, often preferring the convenience of reproduced images to the original works.
AI amplifies these tendencies exponentially. It doesn't just reproduce art; it generates it, satisfying our desire for immediate, personalized creative content (the video trailer for this essay is basically an example of this in action). The barrier between viewer and creator blurs as anyone with internet access can produce complex artworks with a few prompts. Kalpokas summarizes Benjamin's observations as from few creators facing large audiences to an increasing capacity of every individual to express themselves.⁵
"AI-generated works enable the maximization of exhibition value and capacity for audience enjoyment, rendering AI-generated art perfect for the age of increasing distraction." - Ignas Kalpokas
This democratization of creation, however, intensifies questions about artistic value and authenticity. When AI can generate countless variations in any style, how do we measure the worth of human creativity?
Yet, this shift also opens new avenues for human creativity. Artists will increasingly integrate AI into their practice, pushing boundaries and creating hybrid forms that defy conventional categorization. In this landscape, the aura doesn't simply vanish – it transforms, attaching to the process of creation and curation rather than the physical artwork alone.
Metadata becomes increasingly crucial in this context. Information about an artwork's origin, creation process, and provenance gains newfound importance, serving as a digital fingerprint in a sea of easily replicable content.
The Transformation of Artistic Process and Value
“the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition" - Walter Benjamin⁶
Benjamin recognized how mechanical reproduction divorced art from its traditional contexts. AI takes this separation further, fundamentally altering the artistic process and our conception of creative value.
The role of the artist is evolving. No longer solely a creator of original works, the artist becomes also a curator, prompt engineer, and collaborator with AI. The boundary between human and machine creativity blurs, challenging our understanding of authorship and originality.
Artistic labor is also redefined in this context. The physical act of creation - the painter's brushstroke, the sculptor's chisel - gives way to the intangible work of guiding and refining AI outputs. This shift raises questions about the nature of creativity itself. Is the value of art in the final product, or in the process of creating it?
AI-generated art, born digital and infinitely reproducible, derives its value not from uniqueness, but from its reach, impact, and the narrative surrounding its creation.
This transformation extends beyond visual arts. In music, literature, and other creative fields, AI tools are becoming increasingly embedded the creative process, prompting us to reconsider what constitutes artistic skill and value in the 21st century.
Economic and Cultural Implications
“Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation.” - Walter Benjamin⁷
Benjamin foresaw how mass reproduction would transform the relationship between art and society. AI accelerates and complicates this transformation, reshaping the economics of art creation and consumption.
The art market faces a paradigm shift. When AI can generate countless "original" works, the concept of scarcity - a traditional driver of art value - is challenged.
Does cultural capital, once accrued through the appreciation and ownership of traditional art forms, now extend to the mastery of AI tools and the curation of AI-generated works? The ability to craft effective prompts or curate AI outputs becomes a new form of artistic skill, blurring the lines between creator, curator, and consumer. This is not a replacement for art creation through painting, photography, or other methods. Instead, it is an additional modality for creating art that can be visceral, fleeting, beautiful, ugly, or even dumb, much like art produced by traditional means.
Questions of ownership and compensation become increasingly complex. Who owns an AI-generated artwork? The AI's creators? The prompt engineer? The company providing the AI service? This ambiguity extends to compensation models, challenging traditional notions of artistic royalties and copyright. This will eventually be decided, in several courts, and probably several times over.
Simultaneously, AI can be seen as democratizing art creation, liberating the creation of art from the traditionally required skills or means for producing it, potentially leading to a more inclusive and diverse art world. This democratization also risks homogenizing artistic output, as creators worldwide access the same AI tools and datasets.
As AI reshapes the production and distribution of art, it also transforms how we assign cultural value. The "aura" that Benjamin saw withering in mechanical reproduction finds new expressions in the digital age, attached not to physical uniqueness, but to virality, algorithmic popularity, and the narrative surrounding an artwork's AI-assisted creation.
Open Source (it's political): Democratizing AI Production
“For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual." - Walter Benjamin⁸
Unlike the proprietary technologies of Benjamin's era, open source AI models represent a fundamental shift in the accessibility of artistic production tools. This democratization echoes Benjamin's observations about how mechanical reproduction allowed art to be freed from ritual and tradition, potentially serving political purposes.
The open nature of some AI tools serves as a counterpoint to the risk of monopolization that Benjamin might have foreseen in technological advancement. When AI models are open source, no single entity - corporate or governmental - can fully control this new form of expression and human computer interaction, aligning with Benjamin's hope for art that resists co-option by authoritarian forces.
This openness also creates tensions. In the West, open source AI development largely proceeds with minimal regulation, while countries like China take a highly controlled approach. This dichotomy raises questions about the future of global exchange utilizing these systems and the potential for divergent paths in AI-assisted art production. If entire cultural narratives and artifacts are purposefully excluded from datasets, outputs cannot be "trusted" in any objective sense.
The potential for AI in political manipulation presents a double-edged sword. On one hand, it echoes Benjamin's concerns about the aestheticization of politics, where AI-generated content could be used to sway public opinion or spread misinformation at an unprecedented scale.
On the other hand, it also opens up new avenues for political resistance and expression, allowing activists and artists to create powerful, targeted content quickly and efficiently. This tension between control and liberation in AI art production mirrors the very dilemma Benjamin grappled with: how can art serve progressive political purposes without being co-opted by authoritarian forces?
Conclusion: Reimagining Art in the Age of AI
As experts of new art forms, we must become constant learners.
Benjamin's prescient analysis of mechanical reproduction provides a crucial framework for understanding the seismic shifts brought about by AI in art. Yet, the scale and nature of these changes would likely astonish even his forward-thinking mind.
AI has accelerated the erosion of traditional artistic aura, pushing us to reconsider the very essence of creativity and authenticity. The democratization of art creation through AI tools echoes Benjamin's observations about the liberating potential of new technologies, while simultaneously raising concerns about the potential devaluation of human artistic skill.
The transformation of artistic processes and the redefinition of value in the age of AI challenge us to rethink fundamental concepts of authorship, originality, and cultural worth. As AI reshapes the economics of art creation and consumption, we find ourselves grappling with complex questions of ownership, compensation, and the nature of cultural capital in a digital age.
Following Benjamins observation about the political capabilities of mechanically produced content, open source development of AI tools presents a powerful counterpoint to the monopolization and control that Benjamin cautioned against. It offers a path towards a more democratic and globally accessible art world, albeit one fraught with new tensions and regulatory challenges.
As we stand at this crossroads, we must embrace the role of constant learners. The future of art in an AI-driven world is not predetermined. It will be shaped by how we choose to engage with these technologies, the ethical frameworks we establish, and our willingness to reimagine the role of art in society.
We must also grapple with the economic ramifications of AI in creative markets. Will social media businesses survive the deluge of AI-generated content, or will new models of curation and authentication emerge? How will we reconcile our emotional connection to art if seminal works that touch entire generations are created with AI tools? These questions challenge us to redefine not just the value of art, but the very nature of human creativity and its role in society.
In this context, it's crucial to recognize that creativity itself is not a fixed concept. As Jan Stephensen astutely observes, creativity is perpetually engaged in a "definition game" - a constant process of re-articulation in response to shifting economic and political concerns, as well as evolving research agendas.⁹ This fluidity in the very notion of creativity underscores the need for ongoing dialogue and critical engagement as we grapple with the implications of AI in art production.
The future of art in an AI-driven world will be shaped by how we choose to engage with these technologies, the ethical frameworks we establish, and our willingness to reimagine the role of art in society. As we navigate this new landscape, we must remain vigilant to the risks of monopolization and political manipulation, while also embracing the democratizing potential of AI tools. The work of art in the age of AI production is not just a technological phenomenon, but a profound cultural, economic, and philosophical shift that will redefine our relationship with creativity itself.
Footnotes:
¹ Benjamin, W. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1935) LINK
² Ibid.
³ Kalpokas, I. (2023). Work of art in the Age of Its AI Reproduction. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231184490
⁴ Benjamin, W. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1935)
⁵ Kalpokas, I. (2023). Work of art in the Age of Its AI Reproduction. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231184490
⁶ Benjamin, W. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1935)
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Stephensen, quoted in Kalpokas, I. (2023). Work of art in the Age of Its AI Reproduction. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231184490
*all images created by Robert Lester with digital and AI art tools