Digitalization, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), and its increasing application across diverse areas of life have already fundamentally transformed our (everyday) experiences. These developments will continue to reshape our individual lives, society, and culture in ways that remain unpredictable. Questions about how to navigate and evaluate these ongoing transformations, as well as the opportunities and limitations they present, are also addressed by philosophers. In recent years, the philosophy of digitalization and AI has become a distinct and growing field. Public perception often associates this field primarily with debates in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. For example, philosophers of mind examine whether and/or under what conditions AI may possess consciousness, intentionality, or autonomy. In the realm of ethics, key concerns include responsibility and liability in relation to autonomous systems, the protection of privacy, the legitimate scope of digital technologies, and fairness and equal access to and use of digital resources.
With this bilingual anthology, we aim to draw attention to another area within the philosophy of digitalization and AI: its aesthetic dimension. In the following 16 contributions, philosophers from different traditions, authors from neighboring disciplines, and artists explore aesthetic and art philosophical questions concerning, among other things, AI-generated works and their aesthetic status, the creative and artistic potential of AI, the interaction between AI, artist, and the audience, and the aesthetics of social media and virtual realities.
The initial contributions all center around the question of whether AI can create art. In the first essay, âCan Computers Create Art?â, Göran Hermerén raises the question of whether computers using currently available AI programs or tools can be considered autonomous artistsâcreators of artworks whose authors they deserve to be recognised as. He argues that this question must be answered in the negative.
Catrin Misselhorn, in her essay âArtificial Intelligence, Authorship and Aesthetic Responsibility in Art,â also addresses the question of whether AI can create genuine art. She distinguishes between generative and cooperative AI art. She concludes that although AI can act aesthetically in a narrow sense, it lacks the ability for authorship and thus for aesthetic responsibilityâa fundamental requirement for creating art. Even in collaborative contexts, AI cannot be a co-author; its products are âfake artâ that may resemble art but undermine the social concept of art.
In the third essay, âZur Kritik künstlicher Kunst. Ãsthetik unter Bedingungen von Deep Learning,â Dieter Mersch examines the creative potential and artistic status of AI-generated images and critiques the underlying notions of creativity and art. He shows that these systems are primarily based on mathematical optimization processes and image stereotypes, and therefore produce random variations rather than genuine artistic innovations.
In chapter four, âZur Kritik künstlicher Kunst,â Daniel Feige defendsâfrom an action-theoretical and production-aesthetic perspectiveâthe thesis that AI cannot independently create artworks, as it lacks aesthetic rationality. At the same time, AI can be understood as a willful material that one can use artistically to critically engage with AIâs societal role.
In her contribution âAnanke. Von den Möglichkeiten der Kunst und der Notwendigkeit der KI,â Charlotte Klink analyzes the ideologically shaped logic of necessity in public and technological discourse around AI. Using artistic projects as examples, she illustrates how art, through its openness and contingency, can offer alternative perspectives on the societal implementation of AI.
In âPhotography and the Techno-Automatic Paradigm in Art and Aesthetics,â Snježana Å imiÄ explores the relationship between creativity and automatism using photography as a case study. She places the question of whether machines can be creative in a historical context by showing that similar debates arose with the invention of photography. Her thesis is that creativity and automatism are not necessarily contradictory and that even human creativity partly relies on automated processes.
In his contribution âPrompting Imagistic Images: Humans as Shepherds of AI-based Image Production,â Oliver Zöllner, drawing on approaches from philosophy of media and technology, explores what an image is in the age of AI-generated imagery. He develops a new understanding of technically produced images in the tension between truth and kitsch. He sketches the changed anthropological role of the human as a âshepherd of objectsâ and describes the humanâtechnology relationship as an increasingly habitualized affordance.
Lisa Schmalzried, in her essay âArtificial Intelligence, Kitsch, and Art,â starts from the observation that AI-generated works exhibit a strong affinity with kitsch. She argues, first, that (many) AI-generated works are kitsch (AI-kitsch thesis), and second, that these works are not art (AI-non-art thesis). She supports the AI-kitsch thesis by analysing stylistic traits, affective responses, and ideal methods of kitsch production, before arguing, on the basis of an effect-based, functionalist definition of kitsch, for the fundamental incompatibility of art and kitsch.
The next group of contributions addresses the importance of embodiment for aesthetic perception. In âThe Bodily Aspect of AI-Based Aesthetic Generations: Immersive Digital Sensual Experience,â Gülben Salman and Cemre Su Kavalalı first elaborate on the machine learning techniques behind AI-based image generation and show, using historical developments, that AI produces design objects rather than art. They argue that AI can enrich sensual aesthetic experience. Using Merleau-Pontyâs concept of chiasm, they illustrate how AI can contribute to aesthetic experience through hybrid formsâusing immersive museum experiences as examples.
In âEnactive Aesthetics: Insights Through AI,â Harry Drummond argues that AI systems cannot have aesthetic experiences like humans because they lack the bodily embodiment essential for such experiences. He clarifies the aesthetic-cognitive limits of contemporary AI, deepens the understanding of aesthetic experience, and critiques brain-centered aesthetics in favor of an embodied, enactive approach rooted in cognitive science.
Contributions by Simon Waskow and Sebastiano Gubian focus on questions in the aesthetics of music. In his essay âProcessed Material and the Hybrid Index,â Simon Waskow illustrates, using Holly Herndonâs Godmother, how AI-based audio generation detaches the human voice from the body, thereby altering the indexicality of sound recordings. The result is a hybrid product of human and machine, which redefines central concepts such as musical material and process. The essay concludes by reflecting on the far-reaching consequences of these technologies for artistic practice.
In âThe Technical System of Music in Bernard Stieglerâs Aesthetics: Some Remarks on the Role of Computers in Musical Composition,â Sebastiano Gubian examines the role of contemporary music in Bernard Stieglerâs aesthetics and reflects on the transformation of computer use in music after the crisis of structuralism. Using Emmanuel Nunesâ Lichtung I, he analyzes a new aesthetic approach that, with the help of Stieglerâs concept of prosthesis, illustrates the transition from automated composition to more diverse forms of humanâmachine interaction.
Vinicius de Aguiar turns to the field of social media in âSocial Media and the Arts: Two Regimes of Attention Economy.â He analyzes the aesthetic consequences of the attention economy in social media and argues that it is driven by a technologically mediated aesthetic that privileges pleasantness. This âaesthetics of agreeabilityâ undermines the potential of social media for intersubjective experiences. Literature and music serve as counterexamples showing how aesthetic media can enable such experiences.
Jay Luong explores the ontological peculiarities of memes as digital image-text formats in âNeither IRL nor URL: The Puzzling Ontological Status of Internet Memes.â He shows that classical art-theoretical models, such as Wollheimâs type/token distinction, fail to capture the nature of memes, which differ from traditional artworks in three key ways due to their specific social embedding and modes of production.
Sebastian Mühlâs article âFrom Morphogenic Angels to Duotopia: Figurations of Hybridity and Becoming in the Work of Keiken and Cao Feiâ addresses the aesthetic and political significance of avatars in the work of Keiken and Cao Fei in the context of virtual realities and gaming environments. He shows how their avatar figurations symbolically intervene in the formation of digital identities and can be understood as expressions of a visual politics entangled with structures of power, knowledge, and identity.
The final essay, âÃsthetische Erscheinungsformen: Gestaltung öffentlicher Interessen und Raummodelleâ by Christiane Wagner, broadens the scope of the discussion. Wagner investigates how digital spacesâshaped by art, architecture, design, and mediaâcan promote public interests through aesthetic and ethical perception in urban and hybrid environments. Her focus lies on the theoretical and critical analysis of digital communication contexts with regard to sustainable development, social participation, and cultural belonging.
As this initial overview of the contributions in this volume illustrates, the authors provide an exciting insight into the emerging field of the aesthetics of digitalization and AI, and encourage a nuanced reflection on the aesthetic dimension of the digital transformation.