Ai Arts & Design: Questioning Learning Machines

Explorations of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI), the arts, and design have existed throughout the historical development of AI. We are currently witnessing exponential growth in the application of Machine Learning (ML) and AI in all domains of art (visual, sonic, performing, spatial, transmedia, audiovisual, and narrative) in parallel with activity in the field that is so rapid that publication can not keep pace. In dialogue with our contemplation about this development in the arts, authors in this issue answer with questions of their own. Through questioning authorship and ethics, autonomy and automation, exploring the contribution of art to AI, algorithmic bias, control structures, machine intelligence in public art, formalization of aesthetics, the production of culture, socio-technical dimensions, relationships to games and aesthetics, and democratization of machine-based creative tools the contributors provide a multifaceted view into crucial dimensions of the present and future of creative AI. In this Artnodes special issue, we pose the question: Does generative and machine creativity in the arts and design represent an evolution of "artistic intelligence," or is it a metamorphosis of creative practice yielding fundamentally distinct forms and modes of authorship?