Katherine Parrish

In the two years since they’ve been made known and available, Large Language Model AI’s such as ChatGPT have been met with derision, outrage and existential fear by a wide range and number of artists, and not without reason. But many of the cited reasons have been very similar to those given in the arguments against the involvement of any algorithmically based computer generated texts/art. One question I hoped to explore at the ELO conference was how much of the current blow-back represents reactions from a much wider and more general population being confronted with the idea of human- computer generated art for the first time? To what degree and in what way is the relationship between human artists and LLM’s different from that between human artists and more contained, un-networked computer based text generators, for example.

The panel, Rage Against The Machine: A Roundtable on an Arts Community’s Reactions Toward AI Art, proposed to be a roundtable discussion about a controversy that arose from the posting on Instagram of an AI generated image used to advertise an upcoming digital and improvised music show. And it was that, but the organizers of the panel had extended an invitation to the community of people who had raised issues and concerns about the poster and what it represented, in the hopes of having a more fruitful, generative conversation than Instagram can support.

In some ways, it’s not surprising that no one from that particular group of objectors showed up. A conference hosted by “The Electronic Literature Organization” would hardly read as neutral ground. But they wouldn’t have been alone in voicing some of their specific concerns. 

The panel outlined them using the following categories (I’ve summarized or quoted the corresponding IG comments shared by the panel)

Material/financial dimension- it’s cheaper to use an AI than hire a real person, folks need to get paid!

Aesthetic dimension- AI art all looks the same, lacking in “spirit,” nothing new Intertextuality?

Remixes? Theft? – ya. that.
Who benefits? Who loses? – is this a question of idealism vs. lived reality? and what is the ideal? Whose ideals?

Significance of DIY Art society- “what does this say that art again becomes the most devalued aspect of an arts society?”

Many people in the IG forum said there was a clear need for a discussion about AI and artistic practice.

The panelists franmed the discussion we had at the conference with three questions:



Why is it that AI generated arts provoke such visceral, aversive, and moralizing responses?


What would be constructive ways and deal with AI innovations among the arts community?

What kinds of practices and policies around the use of AI would actually benefit artists?

And then they opened up the floor. I was taking fast and furious notes throughout the panel, and then asked my question, in a not very succinct way. 
 My initial sense, after engaging in this lively and thoughtful discussion, is that the most contentious issues about the use of AI in the creation of art are the same issues that are raised when people write with robots, but exacerbated by the scale, the magnitude, the speed, the ease of LLMs. 

… I think.