symphonies, improvise jazz, and emulate iconic musicians.
Master-style painting, was auctioned at Christie’s for over $432,000 — far surpassing its estimate and signaling a major moment of market recognition for AI-generated art. GANs, a class of machine learning frameworks developed by Ian Goodfellow in 2014, have become central to AI’s presence in the visual arts. These systems “learn” from vast datasets of images and produce original outputs by mimicking stylistic features. Artists like Refik Anadol, whose immersive digital installations use AI to translate massive datasets (such as brain scans or architectural archives) into visual landscapes, represent a new paradigm of the data-driven artist. In Anadol’s “Machine Hallucination” (2019), the artist trained AI on 100 million photographs of New York City, producing a dreamlike cinematic environment that reimagines collective memory. Importantly, artists of the African diaspora are also experimenting with AI to extend traditions of resistance, speculation, and cultural memory. Nigerian American artist Mimi Onuoha explores data absence and systemic erasure, using AI not to generate spectacle, but to interrogate what’s missing. Similarly, British Jamaican artist Rashaad Newsome incorporates machine learning into his “Being” project — a digital griot and virtual avatar that teaches critical pedagogy rooted in Black queer thought. Their work challenges dominant frameworks, insisting that AI can be a site of cultural reclamation and future-building rather than mere replication. The collaboration between AI and artists has also taken form through tools like DALL·E (by OpenAI) and DeepDream (by Google), which allow artists to create visual artworks based on text prompts or neural style transfers. Rather than replacing the artist, these tools often serve to expand the boundaries of what is creatively possible, encouraging hybrid workflows and redefining the role of human intentionality. Black diasporic performers have also begun engaging AI with cultural specificity. Artist and researcher LaJuné McMillian merges West African movement traditions and motion capture technology to create digital dance archives that resist the extractive gaze of Western technology. Their Black Movement Library invites communities to record and train AI on their own cultural gestures — reshaping machine learning from within. In the realm of music, South African producer Spoek Mathambo has experimented with AI-generated beats as a way to interrogate post-colonial hybridity in Afro-techno sounds. These artists are not simply using AI — they are repurposing it to reflect and protect cultural knowledge. In the performing arts, AI has found diverse applications ranging from dance and music composition to theatrical performance. Choreographer Wayne McGregor collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab in “Living Archive” (2019), training a machine learning model on his past choreographic work. The AI generated new movement phrases that McGregor then interpreted and staged with live dancers. Here, AI functioned not as a replacement for the choreographer but as a generative partner, expanding creative possibilities through recombination and surprise. Music, too, has seen AI systems compose
ESSAY
Artistic Wisdom and Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of AI
OpenAI’s MuseNet and Google’s Magenta project have created original compositions in the styles of Mozart, Beyoncé, and The Beatles. AI-driven systems like AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) are even being used in commercial music production, scoring short films, advertisements, and video games. In 2020, composer David Cope’s Emily Howell system, trained on his earlier work, produced compositions that critics were unable to reliably distinguish from human-composed pieces. AI has also touched theatre and playwriting.. Beyond simply incorporating AI thematically within the content of plays — such as in “Marjorie Prime” by Jordan Harrison or “The Nether” by Jennifer Haley — or using AI-enhanced production elements like intelligent lighting systems, algorithmic soundscapes, and motorized sets, theatre is now exploring AI as a generative force in the creation of material and design itself. In 2021, the Prague-based Švanda Theatre presented “AI: When a Robot Writes a Play,” a one-act drama written entirely by GPT-2. Though the result was fragmented and at times surreal, the performance became a provocative entry in conversations about authorship, coherence, and the dramaturgical limits of machine logic. Similarly, in 2022, the Young Vic Theatre in London collaborated with technologists and playwrights to create “AI,” an experimental piece where a neural network co-wrote dialogue based on audience prompts in real time, blending improvisation, computation, and live performance to question the boundaries between human spontaneity and machine intelligence. Meanwhile, Black playwrights and directors are beginning to interrogate AI not just as a tool, but as a subject of narrative inquiry. The National Black Theatre in Harlem, under the leadership of Sade Lythcott and Jonathan McCrory, has begun conversations about how AI intersects with Afrofuturism and spiritual technologies — asking not only what AI can do for performance, but what performance can teach AI. In experimental theatre circuits, artist-activists such as Toshi Reagon and Olufunmilayo Arewa are exploring AI’s implications through storytelling grounded in ancestral memory, technological justice, and speculative Black futures. Despite these innovations, AI’s role in the arts remains deeply contested. While some embrace the technology as a tool of democratization and experimentation, others see it as a threat to authenticity, labor, cultural continuity, and the human creative impulse itself. Many artists and critics question whether AI-generated works can truly embody the emotional depth, historical consciousness, or lived experience that define human artistry. Phylicia Rashad, dean emerita of the College of Fine Arts (BFA ’70), underscored this concern by quoting a passage from August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean,” then pausing to ask the audience, “Now, can a computer do that?” Her question echoed the skepticism shared by many in the arts community. The late critic Dave Hickey similarly argued
on the Fine and Performing Arts by Nikkole Salter
jimmy fallon, host of “the tonight show,” features a recurring comedy segment called “Google Translate Songs,” where he and a celebrity guest perform popular songs whose lyrics have beenrun through Google Translate — one of the most widely used AI tools. The results are intentionally absurd. The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” is transformed into “My Front is Not Felt,” and Gloria Gaynor’s empowering anthem “I Will Survive” becomes the far more mundane “I Will Be Punctual.” The segment is hilarious, and part of the joke is that artificial intelligence — despite all its power — still doesn’t quite get us. In moments like these, AI feels less like a futuristic genius and more like an eager but wildly confused intern. Still, despite these misalignments, AI — once relegated to the realm of science fiction — has become an increasingly integrated force in contemporary life, reshaping industries from health care to finance to consumer retail. In the arts, a domain traditionally seen as the last bastion of human ingenuity and emotion, AI’s emergence as both a tool and collaborator has raised complex questions. What happens when machines not only replicate human creativity but begin to produce original works? How do artists, institutions, and audiences reconcile this technological evolution with centuries-old practices of artistic embodiment, intention, and intuition? In recent years, AI has grown so sophisticated that it can convincingly mimic real people and places in videos — for example, leading some viewers to momentarily believe a tsunami hit Seoul, or that a celebrity said or did something they did not. These AI-generated “deepfake” videos, often circulated on social media, can flawlessly replicate a public figure’s voice, facial expressions, and mannerisms, blurring the line between reality and fabrication. Whether it’s a viral clip of Tom Cruise performing magic tricks on TikTok or a fake video of Morgan Freeman delivering a speech he never gave, the realism of these creations can be disorienting. Most of us have probably been fooled Nikkole Salter is the Theatre Department chair and professor in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts
NIKKOLE SALTER Photo by Justin D. Knight.
at least once — laughing, reacting, or even sharing the content before realizing it wasn’t authentic. This phenomenon reveals not only the technical prowess of AI but also the fragility of truth in the digital age. Yet each of us uses AI every day. It has already been woven seamlessly into our lives and artistic practices — often in ways that feel intuitive, accepted, and even indispensable. Still, the growing fear of AI’s seemingly inevitable dominance, coupled with unresolved ethical questions and its sweeping cultural implications, casts a long shadow over the future of unique human expression. If you can use Midjourney to generate a visual masterpiece, why commission a painter? If a 3D printer can render a stunningly lifelike “stone” sculpture, what becomes of the sculptor? If you can hum a melody into Soundful or Boomy and receive a full orchestration, what need is there for a musician? And if you can project a holographic performance onto your living room wall, why leave your home — or pay — to see Denzel Washington breathe life into a character on stage or screen? AI has been embraced in the visual arts as both medium and co-creator. One of the most prominent early examples is “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy” (2018), a painting generated by a generative adversarial network (GAN) developed by the Paris-based collective Obvious. The portrait, resembling a blurry Old
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Howard Magazine
Fall 2025
Fall 2025
Howard Magazine
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