Generative AI
The Age of AI has become consolidated with the arrival of GenAI technologies and their widespread use in all sectors of society. GenAI has emerged as a partner with humans in helping them make everyday decisions and in devising novel ideas and ways of doing things, practically and creatively. As a result, a blurring of the lines between human and machine creativity has surfaced, raising questions about the nature of authorship, originality, and the uniqueness of art in human life. GenAI is providing an impetus for revisiting and recasting such notions, given that it appears not only to be mimicking human creativity, but in some ways even superseding it. Is creativity a phenomenon that exists in itself, independently of its bearer—a human, an animal, or a machine? Addressing this question is the overall objective of this book. To be able to do so systematically, this chapter looks at the core concepts and ideas that it entails, including “originality,” “meaning,” “sentience,” and the “simulacrum”—a semiotic notion that has become especially important in critically examining the correlation between GenAI and human creativity.