Just as CEOs of AI companies are warning that AI may bring about the end of humanity, I’m contemplating my role in generating AI-based works.

So many AI issues still to deal with! Putting aside the existential risk to humanity for a brief moment, today I’m attending to some of the positives for my artistic practice in the use of AI.

For reference the digital collage work below, Spoons for them 2023, has been made with the help of AI.

The role of the artist as curator

It occurred to me that, in the generation of AI images, I am an artist acting as curator. I’m assembling and displaying images, giving them context and meaning. It’s creative, hence the curatorial mode of practice becomes part of my creative process.

There is a familiarity here with other aspects of my practice. In my digital collages I work with multiple images, actions, patterns, marks and blends that are digitally generated and/or manipulated. I use digital tools and I make choices about the use of these tools and techniques which help develop the meaning or narrative in the work.

Much of the AI work I’m doing at the moment involves using my own work as a starting point, curating a series of prompts, curating outputs and then feeding back to the Bot in a lengthy loop of generation.

The images in Spoons for them 2023 come from a complex set of prompts, potentially no two alike. I have collected and catalogued many more generated images of spoons, and the ones selected above fit the concept and intention of the work.

Curating an exhibition of AI work

The blurring of curatorial and creative practice in this space lends itself to exhibition. I can see a future where Bot and I exhbit our work. The creative intention is mine as Curator, the execution is primarily Bot’s as Lead Fabricator, and the Artist attribution exists conceptually—and shared by both of us.