AI is a tool like the paintbrush – it can be used for good things and terrible things

I’m a conceptual artist (let’s get that irritating title out of the way) which means that each idea I have is different than the one before, and each idea usually uses different tools. 

I’ve long been interested America’s obsession with conspiracy theories and the idea that we live in a period of ‘elastic truth’. This of course brings me to artificial intelligence (AI) – the ultimate purveyor of historical surrealism and invented history. And so, of course, the perfect tool for my current interest – the demise of truth in image.

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I’ve made two projects around this idea. 

The first is Another America, an invented history of New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. These images oscillate between the surreal and seemingly real, in some ways mirroring our new relationship with the image. Because AI exists, everything is true, and nothing is true at the same time.

The second project is called We Are At War.

It’s centred around the photographer Robert Capa, who famously landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.  The story goes that he shot four rolls of film that day, sent them back to England to be developed, but the film was mishandled, so only 11 images survived from that day. He created an empty pocket of history, a pocket I filled with AI and re-imagined a lost roll of film. Unlike another America, the point of this work is to be utterly convincing. It was to make powerful emotional images that are entirely invented. The point was to say: “If I can invent the past so convincingly, imagine what I can do with the present.”

AI is a tool like the paintbrush, or the printing press, or Photoshop. It will be used for good things, and for terrible things. The same printing press that birthed Mein Kampf also gave birth to The Color Purple. It’s as good a tool for art as the artist using it. To those who are against it, I’d say to fight AI is to fight the sea. It’s a useless endeavour and achieves nothing. It’s better to be curious, than it is to raise the drawbridge. 

Phillip Toledano is a conceptual artist working with photography, installation, sculpture, painting and video. His book We Are Art War is available from 9 November.

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