Look closely at a painting, and you might be able to see where an artist changed their mind.
uncertain
artist → look → mind
Beneath the finished surface, there may be an abandoned line, a figure moved several inches to the left, a color that looked splendid in the morning and became unbearable by night.
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that → abandon → night
The back may hold a date, a repair, uneven staples, a signature, or the name of a previous owner.
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back → hold → owner
Today they are considered evidence.
asserted
they → consider → ?
AI can produce an image in nano-seconds, then create hundreds of variations before a painter has mixed a color or cleaned a brush.
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painter → produce → brush
Some of the results are technically bewildering and others inspire disbelief: How is this possible?
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this → inspire → disbelief
Yet their abundance is changing our relationship to novelty.
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abundance → change → novelty
When nearly any visual idea can be summoned on demand, newness becomes easier to manufacture but harder to believe in.
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newness → summon → demand
In an age of effortless images, the mess left behind by making something may become part of what makes it valuable.
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it → leave → something
So much recent visual culture can appear at once new and strangely familiar.
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culture → appear → ?
Generative systems learn from immense archives of existing images, then assemble patterns according to statistical relationships.
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systems → learn → relationships
Their output can startle us, though the surprise often arrives cloaked in a recognizable visual fluency: the cinematic light, the dreamlike architecture, the glossy portrait or the eerily composed impossibility.
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surprise → startle → fluency
After enough exposure, even the surreal can begin to feel conventional.
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surreal → begin → exposure
A study presented at the 2024 CHI Conference proffers one perspective about how this happens.
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this → present → perspective
Participants who used an AI image generator during a visual ideation exercise became more fixed on an initial example and produced fewer ideas, with less variety and originality, than those in the control group.
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who → use → group
The study involved only 60 people, so its findings should be treated cautiously, though they articulate something many artists and designers have begun to notice: a tool built to accelerate imagination can also narrow it by presenting a polished answer before a more difficult, original idea has had time to form.
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idea → involve → time
Against this flood of frictionless imagery, fine art acquires another kind of presence.
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art → acquire → presence
A physical artwork occupies time and holds emotion.
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artwork → occupy → emotion
An artist stood before it, considered it, changed it, ruined it, waited for it, and eventually decided to either finish or abandon it.
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artist → stand → it
All artwork contains a sequence of often messy choices that could have gone in any number of directions.
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that → contain → directions
The object becomes a record of attention, and attention is becoming one of the scarcest materials we have.
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we → become → materials
Researchers have already observed a version of this shift.
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Researchers → observe → shift
Across six experiments involving 2,965 people, participants consistently valued art labeled “AI-made” less than work labeled “human-made,” even when the images themselves were identical.
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images → involve → work
Awareness of the machine changed the perceived value of the human hand.
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Awareness → change → hand
This preference extends beyond art.
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preference → extend → art
A 2015 study in the Journal of Marketing found that people considered handmade objects more attractive in part because they believed those objects symbolically contained the maker’s love.
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objects → find → love
The participants were projecting on and responding to an imagined human presence embedded in the object, expressed through the perceived time and care required to make it.
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participants → project → it
We remember darkrooms, paste-up boards, paint-stained clothes, and the physical tools that digital technology has made unnecessary or irrelevant, and often forget the expense and tedium the processes demanded.
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processes → remember → expense
Still, the renewed power of visible erasure or the pleasure of encountering an unrestrained line reaches beyond nostalgia.
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power → renew → nostalgia
These marks allow us to envision the intent and the decisions behind them.
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us → allow → them
AI can attempt to imitate these marks.
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AI → attempt → marks
It can add a false thumbprint, invent pentimenti, reproduce a stray brush bristle, and generate an image that appears to have survived a century in an attic.
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that → add → attic
But mess itself will soon prove very little.
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mess → prove → ?
Provenance and an intelligible creative process will become more important as appearance ceases to represent authenticity.
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appearance → become → authenticity
In educated hands, AI can still become a profound artistic medium.
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AI → become → hands
Photography and digital tools have disrupted ideas about skill and authorship before becoming vehicles for extraordinary art.
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Photography → disrupt → art
AI will be shaped by artists whose choices are specific enough to resist its defaults, and those artists may create work we cannot yet imagine.
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we → shape → work
The presence of a tool has never settled the question of artistic value; the depth and consequence of the decisions made with it still matter.
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depth → settle → it
We are entering a period in which polished images and endless variations are available on command.
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images → enter → command
The works we retain or collect may be those that let us encounter another person’s limits: the place where control faltered or the artist had to surrender to something unresolved.
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artist → retain → something
…and 1 more, not listed.
