AI systems like DALL•E 2 and Midjourney transform natural language prompts into photorealistic images and artworks. With mind bending, rapid advances in AI-generated art – is prompt engineering the future of art? AI art could serve as a starting point for artists, a visualization aid during art direction brainstorming or… as standalone, often stunning, works of art. Museums showcase and celebrate art, as well as the artists who create it. If human contribution to the creation of AI art is limited to the prompt inputs, do the prompts become artworks in and of themselves?

Works of art often reveal the stories of their creators: their histories and their understanding of the human experience. AI art – which has the capacity to be striking and moving to humans – is generated from concepts in an abstract, multidimensional latent space; perhaps that itself is profoundly remarkable and worthy of its own museum label.

Digital Art, June 2022