The Aura in the Machine: Genealogy and the Status of the Work of Art in the Generative Era
2026-07-20 • Computers and Society
Computers and SocietyArtificial Intelligence
AI summaryⓘ
The authors explain that generative AI is part of a long history of art-making rather than a completely new break. They classify generative systems into three types—medium, artwork, and instrument—where the creative control still comes from humans involved. They discuss risks like reduced human creativity and suggest ways to improve creativity through richer environments. The paper also describes how artists' roles change, becoming more about guiding and curating AI systems. They introduce new ideas about how generative works exist beyond just originals or copies and stress the importance of older unstable generative models.
generative AIauthorshipcreativitygenerative artstaxonomyalgorithmic repetitiondistributed authorshipmodel collapseBenjaminian auramanifestation
Authors
Giorgio Presti
Abstract
This paper frames Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) not as an unprecedented technological rupture, but as an industrial-scale manifestation of a deeply rooted historical process. Through a genealogy of generative arts, it shows how AI's questions on authorship and creativity have precise historical precedents. A taxonomy of generative systems is proposed across three functional categories (medium, artwork, instrument), the attribution of which is editorial rather than ontological. From individual cognitive atrophy to Model Collapse, the systemic risks of creative automation are identified; environmental enrichment is proposed as an antidote. The role of the artist undergoes a radical metamorphosis: from craftsman of the object to entropic agent, systems designer, explorer, and negentropic curator. This pipeline-based taxonomy rests on a specific premise: the algorithmic system remains medium, instrument, or artwork, while creative agency resides in the humans distributed along it. Algorithmic Repetition is introduced as the aesthetic degeneration of aligned generative systems; the Benjaminian aura does not dissolve in the generative era but condenses upon the productive system. Manifestation is proposed as a third ontological status for generative works, transcending the dichotomy between original and copy. To support the proposed theses, two complementary aspects are examined: the radicalization of distributed authorship; and the reevaluation of older generative models, whose instability constitutes an aesthetic degree of freedom lost by recent ones.