Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Visual Arts and the Ethics of Their Use

Abstract

The traps of artificial intelligence are more than the possibility to be inspired, to copy in order to create a perfect fake, or as a lie to deceive the public. In March 2023 and April 2024, at the Sony World Photography Awards, various photographers provocatively drew attention to the unwillingness of the profession and the public to recognise the presence and/or absence of AI tools. In April 2016, the result of the Next Rembrandt project was presented in Amsterdam. Just as the forger van Meegeren himself, some eighty years ago, secretly conceived a ‘new Vermeer’, this time experts in art, modern technology, advertisers and a bank have publicly joined forces to create a ‘legitimate forgery’ or ‘the next Rembrandt’. With the discovery of photography in the nineteenth-century, the end of painting was predicted. The opposite happened, it became a tool to help the artist preserve the desired image in memory and to create a work of art. The exploration of photographic processes led to the discovery that the precise perspectives and details in the works of the Baroque painter Jan Vermeer were possible thanks to the use of the camera obscura, although this is still debated. Its use was labelled as a fraud in the Renaissance and Baroque, but the image it instantly records is only a projection. To transfer this image to the canvas, however, requires the artist’s skill. Can AI explore new ideas, stimulate user creativity and help preserve and present cultural heritage? Operation Rembrandt, with its interdisciplinary approach, AI, computer and 3D printer, confirms this. Currently, two definitions prevail, the fear and excitement about the use of AI in art and art education, and the lack of ethics. Although the future of AI is still uncertain, it may be an appropriate tool to deepen learning, develop new tools and functions, and extend possibilities in unpredictable ways.