artist statement

Over the the past half-decade, artificial intelligence has improved upon itself at a rate which has no technological precedent. From our first conceptions of AI until now, its implications have been steeped in duality. It has been the ultimate goal of computer scientists, and the great nightmare for many writers and thinkers. Now, at its advent, we find ourselves wholly unprepared for what the future may bring. AI is limited only by its creator and at the discretion of its user.

What is the role of an artist in a world where art, or at the least its grotesque replication, can be churned out faster than I can write any of these words? Do we provide value to society only in the ways we’re currently superior to AI? As a whole, this ten-image portfolio explores the issues brought upon us by AI in two five-image parts. The first five photos are more abstract representations of my grappling with both the questions posed above and other issues of identity, environmental waste, isolation, and distraction insofar as they are spurred on by widespread AI use. The second group of five photos is a series of 'experiments' showing the faults, biases, and capabilities of AI: its insistence on adding children to an image of my parents, prescribing concrete emotions to minutely changed facial expressions, making an image 'better' by making the subject younger and more handsome, perfecting an image by removing all the people, and quickly producing work not dissimilar from my own.