The hype associated with the acronym “AI” has been a persistent phenomenon emerging in various contexts over the last several years. As the development of technologies related to AI has been progressively accelerating in the last decade, we have witnessed a growing interest in these technologies and their integration in our scientific, economic, social, and cultural frameworks. Technological breakthroughs, usually followed by intensive media coverage and often overhyped representations of AI technologies, have driven both the genuine fascination and the sensationalism surrounding AI. Meanwhile, the technologies themselves have reached a quite sensational level of innovation, particularly in the last two years with the most recent advances in generative and multimodal AI techniques. What was considered to be just a hype only a few years ago, recently became a technological reality. In parallel with the advancements of technologies, the hyped narrative surrounding AI has also kept evolving. For example, in 2018, with the rise of popularity of image-based generative AI models (e.g. the famous GAN model),1 machines were granted “the gift of imagination.”2 Nowadays, as generative AI models are progressing rapidly in producing semantically and visually appealing synthetic content, the impact of these models on human creativity and imagination have started to become a more seriously discussed topic. Meanwhile, the media attention shifted to artificial general intelligence and to even more radical speculations of attributing advanced human traits to AI, like consciousness for example.3 And while consciousness has become the new imagination in the hyped narrative of AI media coverage, the reality of working with AI technologies is still far from its idealized portrayal and involves many limitations and challenges. In parallel with the techno-enthusiastic hype, the critical discourse on AI has also progressed and intensified in the last few years. One of the reasons for this trend is the growing interest of scholars from the arts and humanities in exploring the phenomenon of AI and the implications of its widespread adoption.

The tendency to integrate computational methods and digital tools in arts and humanities studies has been ongoing for more than a decade and has resulted in numerous research and educational initiatives united under the umbrella term “digital humanities.” As a result, a dichotomy between the “digital” and “traditional” modes of scholarship was established and often prevailed as the main starting point in discussing the role and impact of technology in the study of art and culture. However, the recent advancements in AI and the enormous public attention that was triggered by technologies such as large language models (e.g. ChatGPT)4 or text-to-image models (e.g. DALL·E,5 Midjourney,6 and Stable Diffusion7) contributed to a rise of interest in AI among scholars belonging to both the “digital” and “traditional” factions. The perspective on the use of AI in the context of arts and humanities therefore has started to transition from the initial opposition between (techno-)enthusiasm and (techno-)reluctance, towards an increased awareness of the necessity for collaborative critical reflection.

However, establishing and developing a meaningful theoretical contextualization and critique of the various aspects of AI technologies requires transcending the boundaries of one research discipline and engaging in an interdisciplinary exploration. Although “interdisciplinarity” is often used as an appealing buzzword, the actual practice of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI and arts and humanities reveals numerous challenges such as cross-domain knowledge gaps, terminological misunderstandings, oversimplifications, a highly dynamic pace of development, lack of transparency, issues of explainability, and the AI “black box” problem. The attempt to overcome and critically engage with such challenges relies on nurturing cross-disciplinary dialogues. It also requires scholars to take the risk of stepping out of the comfort zone of their core disciplines and it might even require a readiness to engage in speculative and fragmentary explorations in order to tackle the often unexplainable and transient manifestations of constantly progressing AI technologies.

This volume presents a collection of short articles from scholars who undertook the challenging task of reflecting on the various aspects of AI technologies in the context of their relation to art and culture. It combines a twofold approach by focusing both on how AI technologies can be used to study art and culture, and how arts and humanities-based theoretical and methodological approaches can contribute to the contextualization and critical reading of AI technologies. This volume features contributions from scholars who are experienced with the challenges of using computational methods in arts and humanities research, as well as from scholars who reflect on contemporary AI developments from the more traditional standpoint of their respective discipline. The volume consolidates contributions from scholars belonging to different disciplines such as art history, media studies, philosophy, anthropology, digital humanities, and computer science.

The contributions in this volume represent a unique collection of short articles that discuss a variety of contemporary relevant topics and case studies that emerge at the intersection of AI and arts and humanities. The article by Amanda Wasielewski 8 discusses the implications of AI-based text-to-image models on the study of visual culture by focusing on how such models reify the Western concept of style. Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega 9 elaborates on the concept of transduction as a framework for explaining, analyzing, and interpreting AI-generated images. The article by Bokar N’Diaye 10 examines myths of the Greco-Roman world as a case study for contextualizing perspectives on human agency and creativity with relevance for debates on contemporary generative AI technologies. Dejan Grba 11 discusses the poetic similarities of contemporary AI artworks as a starting point for examining the strengths and weaknesses of AI art and for initiating a more comprehensive critical discourse on art and creativity. The article by Arif Kornweitz 12 explores the intersection of contemporary art practices and AI by focusing on case studies of two artists and drawing analogies between the concept of the latent space and the white cube gallery setting. Dominik Vrabič-Dežman 13 addresses the clichéd portrayal of AI in public media and draws on a range of interpretive theories of images to establish a framework for the examination of images of AI as a reciprocal link between aesthetics and politics. The article by Pepe Ballesteros Zapata 14 elaborates on the role of computational methods in the methodological evolution of art history, focusing on several research examples in digital art history. Valentine Bernasconi 15 discusses the challenges of interdisciplinary research in digital art history through the specific case study of machine learning-based body pose estimation in digitized paintings. The article by Piera Riccio and Nuria Oliver 16 addresses the growing challenge of algorithmic censorship of artistic content that exhibits nudity on online social platforms from a techno-feminist perspective. Anne-Laure Oberson’s17 contribution reflects on AI generated images in the context of understanding the meaning of an image in the process of imagination.

This diverse collection of articles evolved into its current form from an initial attempt to facilitate interactive scholarly exchange and discussion on the currently relevant topic of AI and its relation to art and culture. More specifically, the articles presented in this volume represent a selection of extended contributions presented at the symposium “From Hype to Reality: AI in the Study of Art and Culture,”18 which took place at the University of Zurich in April 2023. The authors featured in this volume accepted the invitation to extend their initial symposium contributions into peer-reviewed short articles. The goal of the symposium was to bring together diverse perspectives and encourage cross-disciplinary discussions on the globally relevant topic of AI and its far-reaching implications on the future of art and culture. This volume therefore represents a unique selection of insightful articles that continue the dialogue initiated at the symposium, providing valuable insights and fostering a deeper understanding of the dynamic intersection between AI, art, and culture.

As the organizer of the symposium and co-editor of this volume, I would like to thank the whole editorial team—managing director Prof. Dr. Tristan Weddigen, co-editor Darío Negueruela del Castillo, and digital publications manager Elisa Bastianello for the effort they invested in making the publication of this volume possible. On behalf of the editorial team, I would especially like to thank all the reviewers who dedicated their time and expertise to evaluate the submissions and provide valuable feedback. This volume and the preceding symposium represent results of the “From Hype to Reality: Artificial Intelligence in the Study of Art and Culture” project, which was funded by the UZH Global Strategy and Partnerships Funding Scheme, as well as supported by the Center for Digital Visual Studies.