Bizarre Love Triangle: Generative AI, Art, and Kitsch

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how generative AI influences art and culture, highlighting the proliferation of kitsch, expressive flaws, and the need for critical engagement to ensure responsible AI art practices.

Contribution

It identifies and discusses five types of expressive flaws in AI-generated art and emphasizes the importance of critical understanding of AI's cultural impact.

Findings

GenAI often produces kitsch and expressive flaws in art.

Normalization of AI flaws affects artistic literacy and discourse.

Critical awareness is essential for responsible AI art development.

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has engrossed the mainstream culture, expanded AI's creative user base, and catalyzed economic, legal, and aesthetic issues that stir a lively public debate. Unsurprisingly, GenAI tools proliferate kitsch in the hands of amateurs and hobbyists, but various shortcomings also induce kitsch into a more ambitious, professional artists' production with GenAI. I explore them in this paper. Following the introductory outline of digital kitsch and AI art, I review GenAI artworks that manifest five interrelated types of kitsch-engendering expressive flaws: the superficial foregrounding or faulty circumvention of generative models' formal signatures, the feeble critique of AI, the mimetics, and the unacknowledged poetic similarities, all marked by an overreliance on AI as a cultural signifier. I discuss the normalization of these blunders through GenAI art's good standing within the art world and keen relationship with the AI industry, which contributes to the adulteration of AI discourse and the possible corruption of artistic literacy. In conclusion, I emphasize that recognizing different facets of artists' uncritical embrace of techno-cultural trends, comprehending their functions, and anticipating their unintended effects is crucial for reaching relevance and responsibility in AI art.