Centaur Art The Future of Art in the Age of Generative AI, reviewed

Stephen Mac Devitt looks at  Centaur Art The Future of Art in the Age of Generative AI by Remo Pareschi

Over the past two years Generative AI has taken grip of the public imagination, both hype and hysteria in equal measure. The ease of creating fantastical images by text alone, and the immediacy of social media to spread them far and wide, has given the very complex AI an easily digestible and understandable output. Arriving in the era of fake news, this feeds into ever growing concerns about what is real and what we can trust.

Centaur Art The Future of Art in the Age of Generative AI reviewed

Historically technological leaps bring controversy; the printing press, the camera, colour film, the list goes on. The existing order is upset, professions and skills are replaced, old methods replaced and new opportunities arise. Previously, to create an image, say of the Pope in a Balenciaga-style white puffer jacket, would have required in-depth knowledge of software such as Adobe Photoshop or similar, and a great deal of skill. Now, photorealistic imagery and video can be created by prompt alone at the touch of a button, some would argue democratising art and design, raising questions of who gets to call themselves an artist.

It is in this space that Remo Pareschi writes Centaur Art, a book about the interplay of AI and artist, together in collaboration to form something new. This hybrid of human and algorithm, where machines processing vast amounts of data work with human insights, creativity and emotional intelligence to create an augmented or hybrid intelligence, with the potential to surpass either operating in isolation.

Image is the lens the book examines AI through, while touching briefly on similar applications to other sectors such as government, military, healthcare and the corporate sector. The first parts of the book give context and background to AI and how it works, from its early origins to current evolutions. A similar background is given to previous artistic movements whose methods or underlying principles are relatable to generative AI imagery creation – those that have explicitly explored the automation of artistic creation and the use of systems and collaboration.

The book then looks under the hood, attempting to pull back the curtain and explain the workings by comparing various different forms of AI, from those used in games to the networks required for user interaction. Returning to the core focus of the book, image, it looks at the latest generations of generative AI and how they can give the artist on one hand variability to allow for unexpected outcomes or happy accidents, and with the other have a degree of predictability so they can head towards a specific outcome. The space between a textual description and a visual counterpart.

In the final section the lens focuses tightly on the artist and image creation, sharing examples of image generation and artists who are using the technology pushing the envelope. It is here I felt the author can be overly optimistic on the positive potentials that generative AI can bring. While these are many and very exciting, there is a missed opportunity round the discussion more deeply with the issues that many have with generative AI. These are less about how it is used and who gets to call themselves an artist, and more about the ethics of how the training data that the systems are built upon is gathered or scraped, the bias that data can bring, and issues of copyright and authorship.

As a lecturer and an artist who uses generative AI in my own practice, overall I found the book informative and agree with the author and the Centaur model he discusses. Collaboration between natural and artificial intelligence, the back and forth of ideas and the iterative process, has the potential to enhance rather than replace human creativity.

Author’s Biography

Dr. Remo Pareschi is an expert in this field, obtaining a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh and working as an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Molise. He has held research and management positions at the European Computer-Industry Research Centre, Xerox Corporation, and Telecom Italia, and has co-founded several innovative start-ups and university spinoffs dedicated to machine learning and blockchain technology. He is keenly interested in IT and artificial intelligence’s cognitive and socio-economic implications.

He is the author of Artificial Intelligence: Journey among the Thinking Machines that Will Change Our Future (Hachette, 2019) and editor of Information Technology for Knowledge Management (Springer, 1998).

From the publisher

As we approach the second anniversary of the birth of Chat-GPT, the dawn of generative AI and continuous discovery in this world has led to some fearing for the arts. Generative AI is radically transforming the creative fields, with some predicting that technology will replace human creativity.

Remo Pareschi provides a unique exploration of how human creativity and artificial intelligence don’t have to necessarily be at odds with one another, but instead how AI can support human creativity. He argues that this intersection is not only necessary, but a brilliant and viable future of art and design. Through investigating the parallel direction of human and digital, he investigates the concept of ‘centauric intelligence’, and how the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence will lead to an unprecedented and so-far untapped endless resource of creativity and innovation.

By Stephen Mac Devitt.

Stephen MacDevitt is a multi-award winning designer, artist and educator who works with new and emerging technologies using design principles in the areas of experiential spaces and motion design. Alongside his professional practice he teaches at the National College of Art & Design. You can find more of his work at stevemacd.com

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