Issue 1/2024


ArtGPT


Everyone is talking about AI. Ever since the ChatGPT text generator was unleashed on humanity at the end of 2022, discussions have been raging: whether this is not completely undermining the value of human creativity; whether this is gradually making human agents superfluous in more and more areas; and finally: whether this is not facilitating a potentially dictatorial regime that turns us all into technology-savvy digital slaves. Questions like these are just the tip of an iceberg that has been building up for decades and is currently gaining more and more critical mass. It is precisely this massing, in relation to the arts and culture sector, that we want to address in more detail. The focus is less on the problem of whether artificial intelligence applications will at some point render everything “human” obsolete. Rather, we would like to explore the extent to which human, non-human and systemic forms of intelligence and creativity have always been much more intertwined than is generally assumed. The fundamental ideas of human-machine relationships that underlie the current scenario, which often oscillates between thoughtless euphoria (e.g. with regard to the self-evident use of everyday apps) and exaggerated panic reactions, will also be addressed. A separate focus will be on art production in the context of AI: How can pre-programmed, “generative” processes be harnessed for artistic approaches without rashly throwing any criteria of creativity overboard in the process? And finally: what larger transformations, beyond the creative act of individual subjects, might this trigger in the art field, which may soon be dominated by “ArtGPT”, as the title of this issue reads.

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