Right: Dr. Nettrice Gaskin's Deep Dream-driven portrait of Kendrick Lamar — AI-based art that preceded Midjourney and other generative AI platforms.
Generative AI platforms like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney have been available for general use for about 2-3 years, and in terms of content created, we're seeing a cascade of imagery that mostly fit in these broad categories:
- Decoration: Enhancements of existing images, as with this avatar realification project I mentioned recently.
- Illustration: Pretty/dramatic images depicting a specific subject or theme. Basically, the kind of images you'd see, say, on the front of a record album or book cover, or to advertise a game. Like this image that a judge subsequently refused to allow the generator to claim a copyright on.
- Mash-Up Memes: Leveraging the fact that Midjourney and other platforms have vacuumed up decades of existing popular culture, these are usually fun mash-up pictures/video of the "X meets Y" variety, like Star Wars meets The Simpsons, or Barbie meets Oppenheimer.
To be clear, these are all entertaining and occasionally valuable uses of gen AI (assuming various lawsuits by artists are resolved.)
But there's one category of imagery that seems conspicuously missing: AI-based fine art.
In other words, imagery which expresses something essential about the human condition. I.E., images that you'd imagine seeing in a regular wing of the Museum of Modern Art, not just a special one-off show about art and AI.
Where are they? It's quite possible I've missed some notable works, but I follow this space pretty closely.
Frankly, the only example I've personally come across are works by Afrofuturist Dr. Nettrice Gaskins. Years before generative AI platforms even existed, she was creating powerful images of Black artists using Deep Dream as a palette.
Dr. Gaskins sees her work as a continuation or an extension of hiphop culture. As she's written:
The nature of the tool is to find new styles, new aesthetics in between existing ones, esp. for those of us who create or make images. Generative AI feels like sampling and remixing, two techniques from hip hop music production that I have some experience with or knowledge of. These techniques were part of a culture that was synonymous with grit, resilience and creativity.
The images she creates are beautiful (see above) — but they also have something relevant and important to say. As metaverse artist Jeff "AM Radio" Berg put it to me, about her work:
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 