As remarkable as it may seem, AI, that is to say, Artificial Intelligence is not only being ‘taught’ to do art but some of the pieces already done to date are fetching upwards of $450,000.00 for portraits that an art teacher might well decline to accept as a finished product.  I suppose it’s true that anything a person can get away with now qualifies as art…

Faceless Portraits Transcending Time
by Michael Romani

Faceless portraits transcending time
In the harrowing months of heartless crime
A masquerade of art in collaboration
As AI anthropomorphized is spotlighted as creation

Which story will demand the highest bid
As algorithms decide what is hid
We stand at visual arts' reinvention
With the apparent happenstance of defying convention

Thinking rebellion for rebellion's sake
Is the best part of art we partake
But seemingly not giving care to where we go
With all of this and it's just on with the show

This has become seen as extravagant and contemporary
But to call it art is a shocking statement of honorary
Tweaked AI learning is not art even where fascinating
And that anonymous bid drive price is simply irritating

That is, of course, unless it's okay to believe
That art is simply what you can get away with and to deceive
Others into feeling the new and the surprising
To the point where non-art has become what's tantalizing

Deduced patterns can be sampled but not "art"
That is until machines beat alive and with heart
Unless you count drum machines and urinals as trends
And bluster driving attention as art's final friend

While credible takes are made of visual distinction
Contortions of portraiture are simply distractions
Regardless of mechanistic coherence and appeal
The presence of a true heart is needed to reveal

The meanings needed by every human's soul
Is that which seems lacking while needed to console
It seems this lesion was lost in the 20th Century
But, this hardly seems to me to be art's best legacy

(c) May 6, 2019   Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved