Bizarre Love Triangle: Generative AI, Art and Kitsch

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has immersed the mainstream culture, expanded AI’s creative user base and catalysed numerous economic, legal and aesthetic issues that stir a lively public debate. Unsurprisingly, in the hands of amateurs and hobbyists, GenAI tools proliferate kitsch, but various shortcomings also induce kitschy overtones into the more ambitious, professional artists’ production with GenAI. We explore them in this paper. Following the introductory outline of kitsch in digital culture and AI art, we review GenAI artworks that manifest interrelated expressive flaws, such as the topical oversimplification, mimetics, oversaturated aesthetics, unrestrained formal manipulation, recycling of nebulous or misleading tropes, and unacknowledged similarities, all marked by the overreliance on AI as a cultural referrer. We discuss these kitsch-engendering blunders in the light of GenAI art’s position in the art market and the AI industry, and point out that artists who work with GenAI continue AI art’s worrisomely steady tendency toward uncritically embracing techno-cultural trends, with potentially considerable implications: the further adulteration of AI discourse and, arguably, the corruption of artistic literacy. We emphasize that recognizing the facets of this tendency, comprehending their functions and anticipating their unintended effects is crucial for reaching relevance and responsibility in AI art.