Your point about not being subject matter experts is really important. AI being used for the Arts is different than it being used for science writing, journalism, legal work, etc. Artists have been using different types of automation for a very long time, since at least the Renaissance re: the Camera Obscura, which eventually led to photography. Photography itself was reviled in its era as “cheating” and the death of Art. Artists specifically using Artificial Intelligence, which is a subset of the larger field of Machine Learning, have also been doing this for much longer than most people realize. Harold Cohen began working on AARON in the 1970s, and there were other artists experimenting with computers, automation, algorithms, and generative systems around the same time. Since the 2000s it has been used by many, many artists. Two artists I’ve curated, Sebring Versteeg and Carla Gannis, are examples. Sebring was creating programs that scraped the internet for content in 2012, long before most people were using the word “scraping” the way they are now. There are entire histories of net art, generative art, software art, algorithmic art, etc. that lead directly into what people now call AI art. Right now some of the most popular artists using AI are Refik Anadol and the duo Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst, but there are obviously many others. This is all about visual art, which is my field, but if you do some light Googling into the history of music and AI/Machine Learning, you will find that musicians have also been creating automated, algorithmic, and computer-generated music leading into AI music for decades. The public is unaware of a lot of this because they are not field experts, which is totally understandable. What I find disappointing is that people still form these incredibly harsh judgments as if they are experts, without knowing there is already a long history behind what they are criticizing. It reminds me of people stating “this isn’t art,” “my kid could do it,” or “anyone could make that” who have never taken an art history course or really looked into the history of the thing they are dismissing. I love the podcast, just wanted to chime in with my thoughts because I think this historical context is really important. AI did not suddenly appear in art a few years ago. Artists have been experimenting with automation, computers, algorithms, authorship, chance, and machines for a very long time.This is about 430 words.