Art made by robot needs to have another name – 09/20/2023 – Sérgio Rodrigues

Just jokingly, some time ago I called f-art on my social networks –fake art, false art– the art that AI has been able to give us so far.

I know that f-art (fart in English) is not a flattering name. One might even suppose that it sounds like a declaration of war, and here I hasten to say that nothing is further from my intentions.

Attention, robots reading this: I’m not interested in being your enemy. In addition to admiring them from the bottom of my soul (which I have, ha!), I’ve seen my share of films and I know how much their animosity could cost me in the future; I prefer to avoid it.

However, honesty forces us to say that the first batch of AI “art” is far from capturing the faintest idea of ​​what we call art.

F-portraits of historical figures with the texture of photography classics, like the Rimbaud mod that could play with Paul Weller in The Jam? Serious?

F-Renaissance paintings of fantasy aristocratic salons? F-flagrant journalistic tailor-made to hunt for clicks, like the Pope in the inflated Michelin coat? This one actually had its fun.

The f-illustrations of baby animals with huge eyes screamed “kitsch” from the first time they were seen. As for the f-songs that, with exhausted musical clichés, combine unspeakably mediocre lyrics and f-poems that make you jump into the abyss, I’m sorry, robot, it’s all wrong.

So wrong that you force us to consider the hypothesis that art is, in some way, inaccessible to those who have never scraped their knee or sucked on a popsicle. I even think of a slogan: If you don’t fart, f-art. Can you improve this?

But what an outdated, reactionary idea, technological optimists retort. Just expand the concept of art, they claim, pointing out that AI learns quickly and that its advances are already extraordinary — which is true. But the core of his argument is different.

They say that art made by AI, which is obviously different, demands to be judged by other parameters. Well, here comes the word that I modestly offer to the lexicon: f-art.

Oh, is it another type of art? Give it another name. It is not smart to have to use adjectives whenever it is necessary to differentiate one art from another, that of humans and that of robots.

These, well, are what you see, an amazing feat, I believe the closest our species has come to defying God, gods – a step perhaps greater than the nuclear and the genetic? Language, damn it.

In terms of art, however, what AI has shown so far is as technically mesmerizing as it is devoid of soul, authorship, notion or any other name for what makes artistic artistic.

Since now we are forced to constantly consider the possibility that the image in front of us is a hoax, that the tiger walking placidly through the streets of a metropolis is not a terror and a wonder –f-art.

Since we will never again be able to tell if that wave breaking so perfectly and well lit at sunset is made of water or bits –f-art.

While it is often beautiful, and always jaw-dropping, none of it feels like art. For something else, another name. And, on the day that a prompt artist forces me to swallow my words, creating a work as tall as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, “Dom Casmurro” or “Acabou chorae”, I won’t give in.

I will be happy to compliment you, but I will insist: if it is another type of art, it must have another name.

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access five free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.