Artistic Impressions: Photographer Rankin and artist Phillip Toledano on the art of AI

The world of art is no stranger to technological advancements, but the rise of artificial intelligence is sending shockwaves through the creative community.

This is why we've created Artistic Impressions, or AI, a new series where we'll be hearing from people at the forefront of the arts about how artificial intelligence is affecting their worlds, what they do and how they do it.

Photography is the first subject in our focus so Euronews Culture recently spoke with Rankin, a British artist and one of the world's most famous portrait photographers, whose work has graced countless glossy magazines and art galleries. Phillip Toledano is a British born, New York based conceptual artist whose stunning work ranges from photography multimedia, installations, sculpture and video

AI - love it or hate it?

Rankin, known for his iconic pictures of celebrities and musicians, is extremely cautious but has engaged fully with AI: "We've had this technology just foisted upon us. It's not something that we've had any ability to have any recourse to discuss it, to talk about what it's going to do to us. I'm slightly more hesitant in terms of feeling comfortable using it because of the fact that a lot of the photography that's been scraped through the whole internet is other people's IP," he says.

Rankin has been using his own vast stock of pictures to produced new AI-generated transformations of his work for about two years now, and is excited about the possibilities it offers. "I've had people cry that came to the show because they felt like it was the death of photography, which I totally disagree with," he says. "And I've had people kind of, you know, berating me on social media. But I think that you can't, you know, critique this stuff unless you use it."

The End of Truth

Phillip Toledano, on the other hand, has wholeheartedly embraced AI and is much more enthusiastic about its uses. "I think my job as an artist is to be curious," he says. "My job is to always open every window, to consider every vista, and to think about, 'Is this useful? Is this not useful?'"

"The idea of photography as truth is dead but not photography", says Toledano. "Because AI exists, everything is true and nothing is true simultaneously," he says. "So all my work has been about this idea that photography is truth is dead. It's a completely different relationship you have with your work when compared to working with a real person.

The way we now mostly access images and news information via social media, Toledano believes, has created confusion and societies in which misinformation thrives.

For Rankin that means photography will be even more important. "I think that what it does is actually kind of makes truth a luxury, and I think it actually makes it more valuable. So photography will keep going because I think people will actually put more emphasis on, not slop; but a portrait, a moment in time, it's about creating memories of those brilliant moments, the kind of stuff that's actually really important."

The Future of Art

Rankin and Toledano artists both peered into their crystal balls to think about the future of art in the age of AI. Toledano is excited about the possibilities that AI offers, and believes that it will allow him to create work that he couldn't have imagined before. "I think that each artist that's going to really get into this work... will be able to find those boundaries of what it can do that's completely new," he says.

Toledano believes it's completely unrealistic to expect humanity to behave any differently now towards new technology that it has done in the last 30,000 years. "People are scared now, but that doesn't mean we can't be open minded and curious. Extraordinary and terrible things could happen, we just don't know."

As the conversation came to a close, both artists were invited to send a message to the tech giants who are driving the development of AI. Rankin's message was simple: slow down. "Give humanity the chance to catch up," he says. "You're moving so fast... The most scary thing for me is that people that are communicating with these chatbots, essentially, that's what ChatGPT is... forming relationships with them...I think that we should have a little bit more responsibility in how we put this onto the public. Children really need to be protected from this stuff", he adds.

Ultimately, the conversation with Rankin and Phillip Toledano left us with plenty more questions and food for thought. But one thing is clear: the rise of AI is already changing the art world and will continue to do in ways that we can't even imagine yet.

Phillip Toledano's latest work Another England published by L'Artiere is now available.

Watch the entire conversation in the video player at the top of this page.