The debate around AI and art is not likely to end anytime soon. On one side of the spectrum, there are artists that view AI in art as the death knell of the working artist while on the other, artists are embracing this new technology and incorporating it into their work. 

Both sides have good points (see Nick Cave’s scathing critique of AI generated lyrics) but as someone that’s building tools for artists, we wanted to highlight some incredibly moving and inspiring uses of AI in art. 

Laurie Anderson

Absent in the Present: Looking into a Mirror Sideways 3 (1975) Laurie Anderson. © Laurie Anderson

We’ve long been a fan of Laurie Anderson’s art and she’s found ways to make AI explorations in her work moving and human. Whether it be training a chatbot on her late husband Lou Reed’s work or reimagining her family history with Midjourney, Anderson’s work has found ways to take the uncanniness of AI and contort it into something uniquely personal.

Prateek Arora

The Auzaaris by Prateek Arora © Prateek Arora

Prateek Arora often incorporates Indian street scenes or religious figures with science fiction and horror elements. This unique blend is referred to as “Indofuturism” - which you could imagine leading to the rise of an entirely new media genre built on a foundation of AI creativity.

Xonorika

Jarýi / arrival (2024) © Xonorika

Xonorika explores the dream-like quality of AI generated imagery, often finding that, as she generates her work, she begins to see remnants of relatives and acquaintances in the figures that emerge. Elements of her work also explore the inherent biases of the models themselves.

David Szauder

Aviary © David Szauder

Szauder’s works establish a unique, particular visual style that would be challenging, if not impossible to achieve with such consistency using traditional photographic methods. In many ways, his work speaks to how, with the right artistic vision, models can be contorted toward generating a particular vision with stunning attention to detail.

Charlie Engman

hay i © Charlie Engman

Anyone who’s generated any piece of AI artwork has experienced the deformities and irregularities that generative AI models can do to the human body. As the New Yorker puts it, Engman “embraces the alien logic of AI.” Often times these are the types of work you’d discard in favor of a different seed value - but Engman recognizes that there’s something unsettling about art that focuses on the strangeness of such a new technological medium.