Writing with AI. Introduction to MERZ dAIgest.

Why AI art is “our art” and not “my art”.

Co-Creating with Artificial Intelligence is something between curating Art Brut (Outsider Art) and objet trouvé (found art). Art Brut, because you have to do with an artificial artist, you feed it with data, help it with training, and enable it with the framework — and yet it’s AI that creates media. Objet trouvé, because you “found” it, this media is now in your hands and can do what you want — and how far your conscientiousness will lead you. Calling it “my art” would probably be unfair to the machines. It’s instead “our art”.

Another reason for “our art” is: that most models are trained on enormous datasets with human creative activities from the past. You fine-tune it on your input (like I did it for MERZmory), but the human heritage is in its DNA.

Post-Structuralists and semioticians like Julia Kristeva defined it — in the textual field — with Intertextuality. Now we can apply it in visual media.

Some of you will probably scrutinize my anthropomorphism: “AI creativity”, “artificial artist”, “intelligence itself”. Indeed, even Artificial Intelligence reflects our visions, but probably not de facto: