Should we consider AI art to be true art?

Art generated by AI is the latest internet trend – but it is already having major ramifications for the creative industries, writes David Barnett

Dave McKean is worried about what the growth in machine-generated art means (Handout)

When artist Dave McKean first learned about art generated by artificial intelligence (AI), his knee-jerk reaction was: “Well, that’s my career over.”

The images, actually created using very sophisticated recognition and rendering engines, have become the latest trend. And that worries McKean, a multimedia artist who utilises painting, drawing, digital techniques and more for book illustration, album covers, comic books, photography, in a multi-discipline career that began before he left Berkshire College of Art in 1986.

He has illustrated the covers for every issue of the Sandman comics for DC, and brought his talents to the animated end-credit sequences of Netflix’s recent adaptation of the comics written by Neil Gaiman, a long-time collaborator of McKean’s.