Art crossed with Artificial Intelligence

Whether Artificial Intelligence will manage to replace the artist is already an inevitable global topic. Art intersects and is intersected with it, but opinions are divided between AI's battle with art and its necessary collaboration with it. To what extent will it overturn the concept of art, is one of the questions. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world and making a big splash in the art community," says designer Zeni Ballashi. "As we navigate these new horizons, the challenge will be to balance the transformative potential of AI with the need to preserve the human essence of artistic creation," says composer Liburn Jupolli. Playwright Jeton Neziraj turns the debate to the typewriter, the computer, the Internet and more

A little more than two years ago, the jury of the Colorado Art Fair of the United States of America, while looking at the presented works, came across the "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial". The work features an opera scene with lady signs and the backdrop has giant windows that give the impression that the show is taking place in an open space. The work would get the attention of the jury and also the main prize. When the other participating artists saw who the winner is, underneath the work was written "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney".

"Midjourney" is an Artificial Intelligence program. Then the reactions took off. Jason M. Allen stated that he is a co-author since the Artificial Intelligence has worked with what he requested as a user. He would also say that he does not deny the authorship of Artificial Intelligence, and he stated this when he signed the work.

The pressure to withdraw and return the prize did not work.

"I won and I didn't break any rules", he would emphasize in a conversation for "The New York Times". The jury wasn't swayed either. And then, the artists were divided into two: for and against. The new history of art in the world is now under the influence of Artificial Intelligence - robots.

Invitation to creative review

In April 2024, Jeton Neziraj's play "Balkan Bordello" directed by Blerta Neziraj will be staged at the Uppsala theater in Sweden. There, the playwright would see how the image of the play would be generated through Artificial Intelligence.

"I realized that in some artistic disciplines, 'AI' has started to 'competition' artists, for example, in the field of design", says Neziraj. Personally, he has never used Artificial Intelligence programs for the work he does. But he is not sure about the future. It is assumed that the use of these programs may become "inevitable".

For the designer and art critic, Zeni Ballazhi, the political status of the situation and the economic situation determines and influences the technological approach to art. For him, this fact causes difficulties in defining new multimedia arts.

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world and making a big splash in the art community as well. Some artists worry that 'AI' could take their place or make it easy for others to copy their style...,” he says. Ballazhi himself, who is also a university lecturer, says that he does not think that Artificial Intelligence can replace art which is created and physically touched by the artist, "because it is created with the original feelings, emotions and ideas from the place where it creates". In his perspective, Artificial Intelligence can take on the style, shape, color, technology, but not the physical one that is original to the creator.

Composer Liburn Jupolli is known as a diligent researcher. He invented several instruments. Previously, there was an interview with an Artificial Intelligence program. For him, AI highlights the capacity as a tool for manipulating data in different formats — written, visual, audio — and touches on how these manipulations can change human understanding of creativity, artistic processes, and social norms.

“The role and impact of Artificial Intelligence in art is that it is destined to profoundly influence art, functioning as a transformative tool operating at a higher level of data manipulation. While 'AI' has been around for a long time, recent advances have increased its capabilities, offering us equal opportunities and challenges," says Jupolli. For him, the true impact of AI still remains unclear, as societies are in the early stages of realizing its full potential.

But Jupolli has a finding.

“As 'AI' evolves, it not only improves our ability to compute, process and generate information at unprecedented speeds, but also invites us to rethink the essence of creativity and art. This transformative power is likely to change not only artistic tools and practices, but also the functioning of art within social norms, reshaping our interactions with ourselves and others," he says.

The challenge of finding balance

The art world has already begun to use Artificial Intelligence to create works. Let's say, if such a program is asked to create a work that touches on the history of Kosovo or the historical journey of art by orienting it with some data about the most influential artists in the country, works are generated where nature, buildings and figures of different. Even those that resemble the characters of paintings by local artists. Curiosity is pretty great.

"There have always been attractive things for artists, a certain randomness. Something that is beyond your control, something that frees you from the limited subject", would declare Daniel Birnbaum, curator who is artistic director of digital art production on the platform "Akute Art".

Jupolli agrees, but says that this hidden imperative of technological progress can disrupt established perceptions of art and society, pushing humanity toward unknown artistic and cultural paradigms. For Jupolli, who is passionate about this topic, the future of AI in art holds tremendous promise, but it also requires careful consideration.

"As we navigate these new horizons, the challenge will be to balance the transformative potential of AI with the need to preserve the human essence of artistic creation," he says.

Ballazhi, whose designs have had a lot of resonance, such as the one for the 100th anniversary of Albania's Independence, thinks that AI can provide new ideas and facilitate the rapid creation of any idea, transforming the style to suit a the artist, suggestions and compositional ideas to improve the artistic process. In his judgment, AI may be more useful for theoretical as well as digital arts, design, photography, music, video but not in physical performative ones.

"It can help create new ideas and manage businesses, it can empower not only artists but also non-artists to express their creativity and create visually stunning works of art without going to art school," he says. he.

"What does it matter who the author is?"

Jeton Neziraj is more reserved on this topic. He says that apart from not having dealt with it that much, it is a phase when something so advanced has collided with humanity, which it still does not know.

Personally, I do not believe in these "modern toys and the benefits that artists can generate from them".

"But, on the other hand, about 30 years ago, I wrote my first plays with a typewriter, while now I write them on a computer. Then, like many others, I believed in the writing that was generated by the mechanical keyboard of the typewriter, by those loud sounds it produced that I believed were part of the creative process. But then, I started using the computer and I realized that the drama could be written with a computer, even quite well", remembers Neziraj. He is of the opinion that a work of art can and should be enjoyed regardless of authorship. He insists that it doesn't matter who the author is, as long as people like the work.

"But it is another question what level that art will be and how we will categorize it, as art in the sense of the art we know now, or simply, it will be like a 'parallel art', like an 'AI-art' ", he says.

About the dangers of Artificial Intelligence innovations, Neziraj says that time will tell. But there is no room for panic.

"Art, even in the past, has been challenged by the birth of cinema, by the birth of television, the internet... But it has survived. I believe that surrogate will also survive this variant, that is, the art created by 'IA'", says Neziraj.

The weight of the idea

Artificial Intelligence is invading every sector. Everything is sought through it. And, the more it is requested, the more the robots are enriched with data, making the answers sometimes clearer and sometimes more complex.

Today's artists - especially those of conceptual art - have pushed the boundaries of subject matter. Their installations take everything into account.

Zeni Ballazhi says that the intersection of art and science is constantly being explored by artists in experimental and unexpected ways. It has not yet reached a conclusion about what is created between generated art and that created by the artist.  

"Today it is impossible to evaluate the product created by 'AI' in relation to the physical one by the artist", he says. In his perspective, based and focused on the world art market, it can be seen that the main value is the idea and not the object. And in this case it goes back to a pretty old story.

"This makes us go back deep into the history of modern art of the 60s where Marcel Duchamp's gesture with the intervention of the urinal in an exhibition with a beautiful character: 'Should art be beautiful or true?' as well as the work 'The Betrayal of the Image' by René Magritte which introduces writing into the painting and makes it conceptual, controversial and provocative," he says. While commenting on the work, he clarifies that the pipe as a painted image is beautiful, but reading the writing, one realizes that it is not usable but only serves as an embellishment of the truth.

"Such relationships continue to this day endlessly in art. This development of ideas and information is essentially the main function of the global economy today. What matters today is the information behind the items, rather than the items themselves. "The idea is more important than the work of art itself," he says. He sees the path of artists with Artificial Intelligence as long in many ways. Among them, this whole road "promises originality and unoriginality, inefficiency".

Robot-generated artwork is for sale everywhere today. The debate on whether such a work is worth buying is very extensive. Authorship as well. There are artists who think that young people are falling victim to this trend. This thesis is strongly beaten by the generation that has grown old with a brush in hand. And for many "classical artists" are right.

Shaking traditional notions

Victim of Artificial Intelligence or not, for Liburn Jupollin the answer centers on the tension between Artificial Intelligence, copyright and the evolving nature of artistic creativity. He sees this as closely related to copyright and intellectual property, which have been central to how artistic creation is understood. It says that artists have used the laws to protect their works.

“However, AI challenges these frameworks in important ways. To generate content – ​​be it music, visual art or movies – AI tools rely on large amounts of data, a significant portion of which comes from existing artwork and the digital content we share every day,” says Jupolli. According to him, this entanglement affects two critical issues: copyright and privacy. It says that on the one hand, using such material without permission often violates the rights of creators.

"On the other hand, it challenges our deep-rooted notions of ownership and artistic value, which are associated with a materialistic perspective of creation," he underlines. AI's ability to process and reinterpret large amounts of data, in Jupoll's view, leads to a potential future where artistic creation becomes less of an isolated inspiration and more of an ongoing collaboration.

"A fluid reuse of materials that build on each other. This challenges traditional and rigid copyright systems and paves the way for alternative frameworks, where art can evolve as a collective and continuous process, rather than through isolated individual contributions," he says.

On the values ​​of a work created by AI, Jupolli says that robots are not autonomous as they collect data and a work created through Artificial Intelligence is neither intrinsically valuable nor worthless. He is of the opinion that AI as a tool does not decrease or increase the value of the art itself. It simply provides a new tool for artistic creation.

Determining value in human hands

"Ultimately, the value of art lies in the connection it creates with the audience and the questions it raises, not in the methods or tools used to create it. The role of AI in this process, for now, is to expand the possibilities, offering new avenues for creativity, while the definition of value still remains in our hands", says Jupolli.

The world is divided on this issue. In 2011 in Morocco, Hans Ulrich Obrist who has earned the epithet of "the curator who never sleeps" would talk about a possibility for art and technology to be inseparable. Things have come a long way since then. Now Obrist says that the risks associated with Artificial Intelligence are of a planetary level. It adds that there is a risk that the situation will get out of control. In his perspective, AI should be managed on a global scale. Even for all this talk there must be a consensus between the East and the West.  

"Borders must be established to ensure that humanity is not at risk," says Obrist, quoted by The New York Times. However, it has not denied the positive evolution of Artificial Intelligence.

E, Jupolli sees the threat in actions or inactions that can cause a chain of events that damage democratic values ​​and efforts for positive change in collective and individual freedoms, as well as the way art is created and interacted with. It is a good idea to first identify what the real risks are and not focus on potential aspects that have no impact on human values ​​or are unavoidable.

"Ultimately, AI is creating a new landscape for art, where the changes are not only technical but also conceptual, challenging the way we think about art and its role in society," says Jupolli.

To what extent the thinking about the role of art in society will change due to Artificial Intelligence, remains to be seen. But the beginning is frantic.