Exhibit Aims To Present AI Images as Real Art

A new art exhibition in San Francisco showcases some of the unique ways that artists have begun to incorporate Dall-E 2, GPT-3 and other AI systems into their work — efforts that go well beyond just typing some text and seeing what pops out.

The exhibit, “Artificial Imagination,” comes amid a broad debate over the legal and artistic merits of AI-created art, as well as concerns that more powerful computers could take jobs away from humans. “Artificial Imagination” includes a range of work, from videos to still images and sculpture. While many of the pieces used Dall-E 2 to help generate images, others took a different approach. Alexander Reben, for example, used text generated by GPT-3 and then built his interpretation of the computer’s description. The artists and curators said the exhibition, believed to be the first of its kind, is an important recognition that AI art is indeed art.