[hosh]

In Tantric philosophy (at least according to Christopher Wallis in Tantra Illuminated), the concept of rasa (usually translated as aesthetics) describes the experience of someone experiencing art. It’s not the modernist idea of “this is art because I say it is art”. Rather, something has rasa because the consciousness experiencing the art, in that moment, remembers profound spiritual truths. It’s more similar to what psychonauts might realize during visionary experiences. And if something doesn’t evoke rasa, it isn’t art.

I think everyone more or less has a connection to some source of inspiration and creativity. But not all of us have the craft or skill to execute that vision. These AIs can help bring that out. I am already seeing indie fiction authors creating sketches of characters they have created. I wouldn’t be surprised when someone hooks up GPT-X driven interactive fictions with generative art to illustrate them. If properly curated, little kids take naturally to this stuff — it’s all Make Believe.

Generative music is probably coming next.

This debate on what is art, and artists who do have the craft feeling threatened by the technology is just a surface debate. These models are only as good as the examples we feed them, and there is a place for people to execute on new art styles and variants.

Rather, this ability for anyone to execute on their personal source of inspiration means we will be surfacing up content deep within our collective consciousness. There will be the sublime, and there will be the horrific. Any and all fantasies, both wholesome and beyond the pale, will emerges. What we do about this as a civilization, is I think, will be a much bigger debate than what is art.