Should artists leave the future of artificial intelligence to engineers alone?

The question in the art world is no longer limited to whether artificial intelligence can be used to generate an image or a video clip, but has expanded to who sets the rules for this technology: engineers and companies alone, or artists as well?

According to Vogue, London’s Serpentine Gallery has launched the first cohort of its Future Art Environment Fellowship for Research and Development, a six-month program that brings together artistic and technical practitioners to examine the impact of artificial intelligence systems on cultural production and public life.

Four artists were selected from over a,000 applicants worldwide: Alice Bucknell, Rena Moon, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, and Aoria Harvey. Their work will address issues including the ownership of AI-generated works, authorship attribution, the data from which models learn, and the artist’s ability to intervene in the design of the systems themselves.

The artists will not be mere observers of technological change or users of ready-made tools; rather, they can contribute to uncovering the assumptions and limitations of these systems and propose alternative pathways for their development.

The fellowship’s outcomes are expected to feed into dialogues with the technology sector, universities, and policymakers. However, the program is an experimental artistic research initiative, not a regulatory body with the authority to change AI laws. Its significance lies in its attempt to bring questions of culture, rights, and imagination into a debate that is often led by corporations and tech labs.