From an Experimental Technology to a Mainstream Product

This chapter examines how generative artificial intelligence (AI)'s rapid transition from experimental technology to mainstream commercial product has affected its viability as an artistic medium. Drawing on empirical research on artistic engagement with earlier models of generative AI, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), and more recent socio-technological shifts, it argues that optimization processes—such as interface simplification, improved output fidelity, and mass adoption—have reduced the unpredictability, artistic agency and creative friction that once made AI compelling as an artistic medium. The chapter explores how this shift might affect artistic practice, as well as the subfield of AI art and the art world at large and calls for further ethnographic study of the evolving relationship between artists and AI technologies.