Did you realize that this picture is not real?

AI has always been able to generate “art” on demand. This applies to music, text, and images. Perhaps a new level has been reached with ‘DALL-E 2’: it is able to turn silly accurate descriptions into colorful graphics.

For example, the assignment can read: “A tree surrounded by jumping dwarves – in the background is the bright moon.” A little later, the image is ready.

Or: “An oil painting by Matisse showing a human-like robot playing chess.” The AI ​​did not fully understand this input, but surprisingly: “A journalist surrounded by birds flies on a broom over Old Bern as the sun rises.”

This is possible because the AI ​​has been trained using data from millions of images. The results are impressive in return. But what does that mean for art? Will artificial intelligence put an end to artists soon?

Susan Schumacher is an art historian working on “digital transformations” at the University of the Arts in Zurich. For her, tools of this type are “technical assistance to support rapid visualization”. But she explains, “You wouldn’t call these images created art.”

Although “Funny and imaginative representations are possible. But for me personally, curiosity quickly gives way to boredom ».

Apart from this, such software is also dangerous. The art historian points out: “With these tools, the potential for deliberate falsification of reality increases.”

Fake images are also possible with software such as DALL-E 2, as the following example shows.

“The program therefore stands up to the challenge of increasing the interweaving of physically created representations and photographs of our physical environment. To the point of non-discrimination.”

It is envisaged that the tool is implemented in drawing software and thus work steps are taken in the design of images. “Artificial intelligence-supported functions are often a useful software component of image, audio and video processing,” Schumacher explains.

In general, however, AI is presented less as a tool, but above all as a subject of “an exciting field of research”.

This will raise far-reaching questions about the relationship between AI and art: “How do humans and machines get creative together? Is art still a fundamentally human activity in the age of AI? Is AI purely rational, or can it also imagine and improvise? What makes a human? When can intelligence and creativity be digitally replicated?