A Medium That Thinks: AI and Media Cognition
Information:
Lev Manovich, A Medium That Thinks: AI and Media Cognition.
Abstract:
In this article, I analyze specific properties of AI as an artistic medium. Unlike all previous media, generative media thinks: it reasons, understands images, and possesses encyclopedic knowledge of art history, techniques, and the styles of thousands of individual creators. We can call this property "media cognition.” At the same time, its outputs can be unpredictable, introducing degrees of freedom into creative practice that have no real precedents outside certain 20th-century experimental traditions. Generative media also replaces the digital artwork’s lack of uniqueness with something new: not identical copies, but endless variations. We are moving from the era of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin) to the new period of "machine variability."