ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and the collapse of the creative process
In 2022, OpenAI – one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence research laboratories – released the text generator ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E 2. While both programs represent monumental leaps in natural language processing and image generation, they’ve also…
How to set up a kids’ art studio at home (and learn to love the mess)
Many parents want to encourage their children to be creative. This is not just about training the next Archibald Prize winner. Young people develop important emotional and cognitive skills when they make art. But at the same time, it can…
French Dispatch: four artists whose work was shaped by mental illness
Wes Anderson’s new film The French Dispatch is about the final issue of a magazine that specialises in long-form articles about the goings-on in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. The film is an anthology of shorts representing three of the…
Friday essay: reclaiming artist-musician Anita Lane from the ‘despised’ label of muse
When I heard Anita Lane had died aged 61 in April 2021, a memory flashed up: I’m sitting beside her at the foot of a bed in the mid-1980s, and she turns to me to say how much my hair…
AI art is everywhere right now. Even experts don’t know what it will mean
An art prize at the Colorado State Fair was awarded last month to a work that – unbeknown to the judges – was generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. Social media have also seen an explosion of weird images…
AI is exciting – and an ethical minefield: 4 essential reads on the risks and concerns about this technology
If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to figure out what this AI thing is all about. Large-language models, generative AI, algorithmic bias – it’s a lot for the less tech-savvy…
How Bob Dylan used the ancient practice of ‘imitatio’ to craft some of the most original songs of his time
Over the course of six decades, Bob Dylan steadily brought together popular music and poetic excellence. Yet the guardians of literary culture have only rarely accepted Dylan’s legitimacy. His 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature undermined his outsider status, challenging scholars,…
6 ways to help kids express their feelings about the coronavirus pandemic through art
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected children’s worlds in many ways. Due to closures and restrictions, they have experienced the loss of social engagement and the support of friends, school communities or extended family. Children have likely had conversations about the…
Is AI-generated art really creative? It depends on the presentation
Ai-Da sits behind a desk, paintbrush in hand. She looks up at the person posing for her, and then back down as she dabs another blob of paint onto the canvas. A lifelike portrait is taking shape. If you didn’t…
The folly of making art with text-to-image generative AI
Making art using artificial intelligence isn’t new. It’s as old as AI itself. What’s new is that a wave of tools now let most people generate images by entering a text prompt. All you need to do is write “a…
