The Ghost in the Algorithm

Two critics—one AI-skeptical, the other AI-curious— discuss the merits of art made by machines.

- By JERRY SALTZ and DAVID WALLACE-WELLS

Roope Rainisto's artwork contains the uncanny hallmarks of the AI aesthetic circa 2025.

YOU MAY THINK of AI art as a form of machine-generated slop. But lately it’s been getting kind of weird. On April 21, New York's senior art critic, Jerry Saltz, and the New York Times writer David Wallace-Wells held a conversation at David Zwirner gallery in New York on the subject. Among the questions they tackled: What exactly does AI art look like, and how is it that we can recognize it? Why has it proved so useful for political purposes, particularly as Trump-kitsch propaganda? How much difference is there between AI art and human art, really, and how long will that difference last? Here, an edited, condensed, and slightly remixed version of their discussion.

David Wallace-Wells: Recently, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and the sort of public guru of the AI moment, tweeted, “I think this is gonna be more like the Renaissance than the Industrial Revolution.” You tend to hear that kind of thing from people who think more about the Industrial Revolution than the Renaissance. But is it possible that the bigger disruption won't be to the economy or the way we work, but the new forms, new feelings, and new meanings generated by AI?

Jerry Saltz: What you have to keep in mind about the Renaissance is that 90 percent of the art made then was bad.

That ratio of quality may run through all eras and cultures. And so right now, I can say that 90 percent of AI art is going to be shite, and I know that is going to be true before it even happens.

DWW: I may be a little less interested in the question of whether it's good or not than in just trying to figure out what it even is. I don't even know what to call it.

JS: We have to call non-AI art just "art." And AI art "maybe art."