CDN Talk: Art in the Age of AI. Who is the author, and what do they want?

Who speaks when language models speak? Does AI democratise art? What can be gained by comparing LLMs and art? The thesis is that LLMs become similar to art insofar as they resemble postmodern philosophy, and that the future of art will shift from craftsmanship and mapping reality towards concepts and messages.

About Roberto Simanowski

Roberto Simanowski is a scholar of media and cultural studies and holds a Ph.D. in literary studies and a Venia Legendi in media studies. He is the founder and editor of the journal on digital culture and aesthetics dichtung-digital.org (1999-2014) and the author of several books on digital culture and politics. His works in English include: Digital Art and Meaning (University of Minnesota Press 2011), Data Love, and Facebook Society (both Columbia University Press 2016 and 2018), Digital Humanities and Digital Media: Conversations on Politics, Culture, Aesthetics and Literacy (Open Humanities Press 2016) as well as The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas (CHOICE award for Outstanding Academic Titles for 2019) and Waste: A New Media Primer (both MIT Press 2018). His book Todesalgorithmus. Das Dilemma der künstlichen Intelligenz [Death Algorithm. The dilemma of artificial intelligence] received the Tractatus Award for best philosophical essay in German in 2020. His book Sprachmaschinen. Eine Philosophie der künstlichen Intelligenz (Language Machines: A Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence) appeared with C.H.Beck in October 2025. Simanowski worked as a professor of German Studies at Brown University and as a professor of Digital Media Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Basel and at City University of Hong Kong. In June of 2020 he joined the Excellence Cluster Temporal Communities at the Freie Universität Berlin as a Distinguished Fellow.