The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics presents a lecture on "Debunking the Myth of the Genius: A Tale from AI Art," at 2 p.m. on Nov. 9.

AI image generators and massive image databases raise a number of issues relating to the world of art and of creative practices in general. In this talk, Paola Romero (London School of Economics) focuses on the idea of "genius," traditionally discussed in the philosophy of art and in particular during the Romantic period, in order to explore two claims: first, that the idea of an artist as "genius" needs to be confronted with the fact that artists have always imitated each other and developed their craft by appealing to previous works and thus transforming them anew. Second, and more controversially, Romero argues that artificial intelligence "creates" art in a way that is similar to this traditional process of imitation and transformation. The question we will finally address is whether AI generated art is or should be considered art from the perspective defended in this talk.