The trouble with AI art isn’t just lack of originality. It’s something far bigger | Eric Reinhart

When artwork is invented by a machine, it loses its most important power: to help people connect. In an already lonely era, that is particularly dangerous

The artificial intelligence giant OpenAI recently announced that its ChatGPT platform now provides free image generation, prompting an online flood of images imitating the styles of the animator Hayao Miyazaki and other well-known artists. This has been heralded as the next step in the death of art and artists, joining the impending death - or zombification - of the writer, as AI-generated novels are slated to flood the market. But a peculiar feeling, or rather lack thereof, arises when trying to engage with AI art objects.

It is not simply that AI lacks originality; after all, so too does most human art. The problem runs far deeper: the essence of art is lost in the process of its machinic invention and, with it, the very possibility of a democratic society is put under threat.