The zombification of art history: How ai resurrects dead masters, and perpetuates historical biases

Abstract

In the past few years deep-learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) neural networks have achieved major milestones in artistic image analysis and generation, producing what some refer to as art. We reflect critically on some of the artistic shortcomings of a few projects that occupied the spotlight in recent years. We introduce the term Zombie Art to describe the generation of new images of dead masters, as well as The AI Reproducibility Test. We designate the problems inherent in AI and in its application to art history and suggest further art-related implementations for these new tools.