{"id":6171,"date":"2026-09-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hacnumedia.org\/?p=6171"},"modified":"2026-08-06T14:14:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:14:02","slug":"a-decade-of-ai-how-artists-see-the-evolution-of-the-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hacnumedia.org\/en\/a-decade-of-ai-how-artists-see-the-evolution-of-the-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade of AI: How Artists See the Evolution of the Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A group of roughly thirty pioneering artists took part in a study conducted by researchers from several European universities. The goal was to give a voice to artists who have been working with AI for nearly a decade in order to understand how their practices, imaginaries, and ethical positions have evolved alongside the rise of generative AI. We spoke with T\u00e9o Sanchez, a researcher at the University of Munich and co-author of the study. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

In technology, the perception of time seems to accelerate constantly. Within just a few months, new tools emerge and transform creative practices, to the point where it can be difficult to remember a world without generative AI. Yet artificial intelligence has a much longer history in the arts. Long before Gemini or Nano Banana, artists were already experimenting with neural networks, training their own models, and repurposing the earliest AI systems. Their perspective now offers valuable hindsight on the direction these technologies have taken. That is precisely the ambition of Artists on a Decade of AI Evolution<\/a>, a study conducted by researchers from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich<\/a>, Hochschule M\u00fcnchen University of Applied Sciences<\/a>, Sorbonne Universit\u00e9<\/a>, the University of Nottingham<\/a>, and the University of the Arts London<\/a>. “We wanted to understand how artists who had been working with these technologies before they became mainstream experienced the rise of consumer-facing generative AI, the ethical tensions it raises, and the ways it has transformed their artistic practices,” explains T\u00e9o Sanchez. “The idea was to develop a longitudinal perspective spanning ten years.” Published as part of the CHI 2026 conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the study is based on approximately thirty in-depth interviews with international artists working across new media, visual arts, live performance, music, design, and poetry. <\/p>\n\n

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T\u00e9o Sanchez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

A Qualitative Study of Early AI Artists<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

The researchers\u2014T\u00e9o Sanchez, Mariya Dzhimova, Stacy Hsueh, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Vaynee Sungeelee, and Baptiste Caramiaux\u2014first identified more than 120 artists who had incorporated AI into their practice before 2020, well before the emergence of large language models. “We also needed to clarify what we meant by AI,” T\u00e9o Sanchez explains. “In this study, we’re primarily referring to practices involving deep learning and contemporary neural networks.”<\/p>\n\n

Thirty artists ultimately agreed to participate in the interviews. The group includes both internationally recognized figures and lesser-known practitioners. Among them are poet and researcher Alison Parrish<\/a>, choreographer Mariel Pettee<\/a>, and visual artists Vadim Epstein,<\/a> Terence Broad<\/a> and Atay Ilgun<\/a>. On the French side, the study also features Hugo Caselles-Dupr\u00e9<\/a>, a member of the Obvious<\/a> collective, which gained international attention in the mid-2010s following the sale of Portrait of Edmond de Belamy at Christie’s in 2018. Rather than relying on a standardized questionnaire, the study seeks to understand artists’ lived experiences, contradictions, and individual trajectories in response to the rapid evolution of AI tools. <\/p>\n\n

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