Abstract

This chapter aims to conceptualise AI-led art as falling in-between the Benjaminian categories of auratic art and mechanical reproduction. In this way, AI-generated artistic content emerges as a novel category in cultural production. The argument is constructed in four distinct steps. First, the authors provide a reading of Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility, focusing in particular on the dissolution of the auratic quality of art and the contrast between aura and mechanical reproduction. Second, an overview of generative AI is provided in order to better elucidate the process through which data is being turned into (somewhat) coherent output. Third, the authors explore what it means for art to be AI-led, i.e. the intersection between a human artist and AI tools in order to identify the balance of agency between the two. Finally, in the fourth step, the authors aim to locate AI-led works within the Benjaminian schema, identifying both the similarities to and differences from auratic works of art and mechanical reproductions. Having done so, the authors then conclude that AI-led art has a distinct category. Contrary to widespread assumptions, this type of art goes beyond mere automated regurgitation of the world (or data) while simultaneously only partly approximating the authenticity and situatedness which Benjamin saw as constitutive of aura. Consequently, this chapter concludes with proposals as to the possible societal role and evaluation of AI-led art.