AI, Authorship, and the Future of Art

Jamie Bradbury

So, John Berger’s "Ways of Seeing," right? It’s a text that’s stuck with me since my early days studying art. Berger had this knack for reshaping how we think about the act of seeing, of interpreting visual media. And his observations about mechanical reproduction—how technology fundamentally alters not just the object of art but how we interact with it—feel eerily relevant, maybe even urgent, now that we’re looking at art through the lens of artificial intelligence.

Jamie Bradbury

Take AI-generated art, for instance. It doesn’t just replicate human styles—it’s not like photography, where there’s a clear human operator making intentional choices. With AI, we’re seeing something much more elusive. Machines are actively participating in creation, but not in the same way humans do. There’s no individual artist’s emotional arc, no life story framing the work. And yet, the art still... exists. It holds a certain power, doesn’t it?

Jamie Bradbury

I mean, think about that Christie’s auction a few years back—the sale of “Edmond de Belamy,” an AI-generated portrait. The final hammer price was staggering, almost half a million dollars. The piece was created using an algorithm trained on historical artworks, but... who’s the author there? Is it the developer of the algorithm? The AI itself? Or is it maybe a collage of all the artists whose works fed the machine? It’s disorienting. And kind of revolutionary in how it challenges authorship.

Jamie Bradbury

And yet, what really fascinates me, as someone who’s both created art and taught it for years, is how this disrupts the idea of style. Historically, movements like Impressionism or Surrealism were shaped by distinct voices—Monet, Dalí, Kahlo—all deeply individual. But AI? It isn’t bound by a personal narrative or a single "style." Instead, it’s producing work that’s often an amalgamation, like this patchwork quilt of salvaged aesthetics. Does that dilute the art? Or is this some new frontier for creative expression?

Jamie Bradbury

It’s worth asking whether AI art even supports the idea of individual authorship at all. I think back to Berger and his notion of meaning being stripped from objects by reproduction. With AI, it’s not just meaning being dispersed—it’s authorship itself, scattered into fragments. And, oddly enough, we’re left grappling with a medium that feels deeply collaborative, but entirely absent of identity.

Jamie Bradbury

You know, something about AI art feels... hollow, in a way. Not in terms of technique—the technical proficiency is undeniable, often stunning. But when you strip it down, there’s this lack of emotional resonance. Traditional art carries fragments of the artist’s life, their struggles, their joys—a whole narrative woven into the work.

Jamie Bradbury

With AI, that’s missing. There’s no artist’s hand, no personal journey shaping the creation. And for the audience, that absence, you know, it creates a disconnect. It’s not just what we see—it’s how we feel, how we relate to the story behind it. Are we interacting with art, or just an aesthetically pleasing product churned out by a dataset-driven algorithm?

Jamie Bradbury

And it’s worth mentioning the biases at play here. AI is trained on datasets, right? These datasets, they’re built by humans—which means they inherit all the blind spots, all the limitations that come with that. If an AI learns from a database skewed toward, let’s say, Renaissance art, it’s not going to reflect the diversity of modern creative voices. Even worse, it reinforces the same narrow frameworks art has been trying to break away from for decades.

Jamie Bradbury

But here’s the paradox—it’s within this framework of technical precision and dataset-driven creation that we start grappling with concepts like authenticity. Walter Benjamin, in his essay about mechanical reproduction, talked about the “aura” of original artworks—their unique essence tied to their time and place. If something lacks human intention or a sense of its own origin, can it really possess that aura? Or is the AI simply building, I don’t know... soulless duplicates?

Jamie Bradbury

It’s such a strange duality—AI-generated art can be emotionally compelling on the surface, but it lacks the depth of human experience. And perhaps, that’s where the tension lies: in this gap between mechanical perfection and the messy, deeply personal energy that makes art feel alive.

Jamie Bradbury

So, let’s talk about the viewer's role in all this. Traditionally, when we think of art, we imagine a passive audience—a collector or a casual admirer standing before a canvas, taking in whatever the artist intended to communicate. But with AI-generated and digital art forms, that relationship feels like it’s evolving—kind of morphing into something much more dynamic.

Jamie Bradbury

John Berger, as always, offers us a lens here. He talked about how technology changes the texture of viewing, how seeing art is shaped just as much by the viewer as by the artwork itself. If mechanical reproduction redefined that dynamic back then, AI is taking it to a whole other level. As viewers, we’re no longer just bystanders. We’re collaborators, whether we mean to be or not.

Jamie Bradbury

Take immersive digital gallery spaces, for instance—these environments where you walk in, and the artwork shifts and responds to you in real time. It catches a movement, maybe an expression on your face, and suddenly the piece changes. It’s not just interactive—it’s adaptive. You, the viewer, aren’t separate from the creation anymore; you’re part of its unfolding, its meaning. And in those moments, you start wondering: Where does the art really exist? On the screen? Or, maybe, in that brief interaction between you and the machine?

Jamie Bradbury

This shift has deeper implications, though. I mean, if art becomes about this fluid, almost co-created experience, does it lose its boundaries? Its permanence? And what does that mean for ideas like beauty or truth—concepts that have helped guide art for, well, centuries? Maybe they’re not fixed anymore; maybe they’re dissolving into something new, something that we’re only just beginning to understand.

Jamie Bradbury

It’s clear that AI is reshaping not only how art is made but also how it’s lived. And maybe, in asking us to engage more directly, it’s forcing us—humanity, I mean—to figure out whether we see ourselves as mere observers of creativity or active meaning-makers in its process.

Jamie Bradbury

On that note, thanks for joining me today. It’s a fascinating time to be exploring these questions, and I hope we’ve sparked a few of your own along the way. Until next time, be thoughtful, be curious, and keep creating meaning.