One of the assumptions we compiled in class was something along the lines of ‘photos are an intentional choice made by the author.’ The way this article conceives of certain image-making systems like GANs or Google Clip show how this assumption can be challenged (beyond just ‘accidental photos’ in the sense of your finger slipping on the phone camera shutter button.) Like all algorithmic art, the author concedes aesthetic control but retains a certain degree of conceptual control. Though the author themself doesn’t decide what exact dog a GAN will generate or what Google Clip will deem salient, the author (or the authors who wrote the program) is still setting the rules for what the system will do. The conceptual space of possible images is limited.
I’ve never understood the concept of ‘creativity’, but maybe in order to have true authorship, there must have been the ability to make something else instead. A GAN (in 2020, at least) can’t be a true author because it doesn’t make true choices (and therefore by some definitions is not conscious.) (Also I don’t know where to draw the line on what makes a ‘true’ choice given the predictability of human behavior, but I definitely don’t think we’ve reached it.) This is why the whole Obvious/Christie’s thing was so silly. AI is not yet a creator, it is still a tool for creators, because its ‘own’ decisions are in fact highly predetermined. Actually, my whole argument is falling apart since I don’t believe in free will, never mind.
As the theorist and artist Grimes once noted, we may be nearing “the end of human-only art.” I’m not sure how we’ll know when it happens, exactly, but there will be a point when it can no longer be denied that AI cameras are making their own decisions, and have thus become photographers.
