ABSTRACT
This introduction to what we describe as “AI aesthetics” outlines different ways in which we can conceptualize both parts of this compound term. In situating generative AI platforms—or, more specifically, AI-generated outputs—within the domains of media aesthetics, the first part of the introduction provides some explanations of the implications of approaching technologies like these as media. The second part then discusses two diametrically opposed ways of conceptualizing both “media” (as instruments and as dispositives) and “aesthetics” (as artistics and as aisthetics) in “radically” narrow and broad ways, respectively. Against this background, the third part proposes two alternative “middle-ground” conceptualizations (media as actor-networks and aesthetics as concerned with self-referential aesthetic perception), which can both be located “in-between” the respective narrow and broad conceptualizations presented before. Finally, we explore in slightly more detail in which ways, and relative to which specific “use cases” and interests, AI-generated outputs may (or may not) draw attention toward their perceivable medial form. In conclusion, we propose to distinguish six conceptualizations of “AI aesthetics” that inform existing research on AI-generated outputs by making different assumptions about what is “given”—and what, in contrast, is considered a “matter of concern.”
