Is AI really stealing from artists? The uncomfortable truth about originality in art
Let's be brutally honest: 'originality' in art is often just a well-curated amnesia. The hand-wringing over AI 'stealing' from artists feels a bit like complaining that a master chef 'stole' the concept of combining flour and water. Artists have been remixing, recontextualizing, and 'borrowing' from each other, from myths, and from the zeitgeist since the first cave painting. AI isn't an unprecedented thief; it's simply a remarkably efficient, data-driven magpie, holding up a mirror to a creative process that was never as pristine as we liked to imagine.
This feature dives into how artificial intelligence isn't just creating new images, but fundamentally reshaping our understanding of art, originality, and authorship. Far from being a new phenomenon, the act of borrowing, adapting, and collaborating has always been at the heart of artistic evolution. Indian contemporary artists like Pushpamala N, who often stages herself within historical photographs to critique visual narratives, Raqs Media Collective, known for their interdisciplinary questioning of knowledge and archives, and Shilpa Gupta, whose work frequently reclaims and reinterprets public and personal histories, vividly illustrate this fluidity. Their practices inherently challenge notions of singular authorship, providing a rich lens through which to view AI’s impact on the very fabric of creativity.
