Claire Anscomb

Rapid technological advances have raised questions about the ontological status of the photographic medium as a form of “writing” or “drawing” with light. These advances include recent forms of generative AI (GenAI), where photographic materials frequently feature in training data and novel images can be generated that appear photographic. Some are inclined to categorize these images as photographs, moving past historic conceptions of the medium, while others argue that a distinction should be made between these new practices and “classic photography.” This article advances the latter view, arguing that just as photography was not the “death of painting,” so AI is unlikely to be the death of photography. By examining how new practices bring together GenAI and photography, this article undertakes a taxonomical project to discern the nature of these relationships and make space for photographic practices to continue to flourish independently of GenAI, while also distinguishing between new practices involving GenAI that are artistically inclined and those that are not. These distinctions are important, it is demonstrated, because if we cannot get basic facts about how these items were created and the practices in which they were made right, then we cannot get to fruitful aesthetic discourse about them.

This article addresses uncertainties over authorship in the age of generative AI by developing the theoretical underpinnings of a systematic approach to attributing authorship in visual art practices involving generative AI, which build on the workings of multiple agents and technologies. By using an analytic philosophical methodology to analyze the practices and key concepts under discussion it is clarified what is meant by authorship in these practices and what kind of works are at stake. As this analysis finds, authorship becomes complicated in these practices not just because of the non-deterministic workings of generative AI systems, but because the works under discussion can be viewed on the one hand as the outputs of generative AI systems and on the other as works of AI art, including kinds referred to here as “synthetic images”. Importantly, authorship in the latter case requires intentionality and autonomy from agents to both initiate the creative process and ratify, or evaluate, the work as theirs, something that only humans can do at this point. Nevertheless, the dependence of synthetic images on AI-generated images means that in attributing authorship in the practices under discussion, we ought to account for the dual identity of these items and, accordingly, the different forms of authorship and contributions attached to them. This dual approach, it is demonstrated, provides the tools to assess when the potentially many and varied figures involved in these practices should count as authors, or other kinds of contributors, and facilitates more rewarding appreciation of the artworks.

Increasingly, artists describe the feeling of creating images with generative AI systems as like working with a “collaborator”—a term that is also common in the scholarly literature on AI image-generation. If it is appropriate to describe these dynamics in terms of collaboration, as I demonstrate, it is important to determine the form and nature of these joint efforts, given the appreciative relevance of different types of contribution to the production of an artwork. Accordingly, I examine three kinds of collaboration that can be found in the philosophical literature on artistic authorship—collective authorship, co-creatorship, and co-production—to determine whether human-AI interactions comprise joint efforts as per such kinds. As I find, collaboration is a concept that invokes rich psychological terms and so one to used be with care in relation to generative AI, which does not yet meet the conditions to count as an artistic collaborator in the senses derived from the literature. To progress discussions on ethical and legal issues that are raised by image-making practices involving generative AI, and further research into the distinctive qualities afforded by interactions with these systems, I argue that we ought to frame their contributions to the production of visual artworks in terms of a “generative” contribution and describe the interactions between humans and generative AI systems as “AI-assisted production”.

It is well-documented that the alteration of portrait photographs can have a negative impact on a viewer’s self-esteem. One might think that providing written disclaimers warning of alteration might help to mitigate this effect, yet empirical studies have shown that viewers continue to feel like what they are seeing is real, and thus attainable, despite knowing it is not. I propose that this cognitive dissonance occurs because disclaimers fail to show viewers how to look at the contents of a photographic image differently. Consequently, viewers have the same perceptual experience, where the picture appears to faithfully resemble a direct visual experience of the subject, which conflicts with their changing sense of warrant. However, I argue that the degree of perceived similarity, and so contact, may be subject to change depending on what a viewer is attentive to during their viewing of an image, including subtle but unrealistic signs of alteration.

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance.

There is a sustained phenomenological tradition of describing the character of photographic pictorial experience to consist in part of a feeling of contact with the subject of the photograph. Philosophers disagree, however, about the exact cause of the ‘contact phenomenon’ and whether there is a difference in the phenomenal character between the pictorial experiences of photographs and handmade pictures so that, if a viewer mistakes the type that a token image belongs to, their sense of contact can alter. I argue that the contact phenomenon is contingent upon, and triggered by, the viewer’s perceptual experience of the image, which may be subject to change depending upon how a viewer attends to an image. I develop a hybrid account to resolve how the perceptual and cognitive aspects of a viewer’s experience interact and produce the complex phenomenology, including conflicting mental states, that a viewer can undergo during the described experiences.

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work.