It’s difficult to process AI’s accelerated growth over the past few years. Back in 2022, AI was starting to pop up across the internet as a clunky image generator. Users could enter a random string of descriptors and get back a grid of mutant renditions, generated by some sort of engine. Type in “Rudy Giuliani eating salad in a Port-A-Potty” and boom, you’d get a set of nine images of him inside a portable commode, eating greens. 

But not really. They were all abstract smears that could look like what you wanted if you squinted hard, but at the end of the day it was clumsy in its attempt to do what you asked. Four years later tech platforms have integrated AI into every aspect of their software, people are fostering romantic bonds with ChatGPT, and an AI version of Val Kilmer, who died a year ago, is set to co-star in a film that he signed on to do before his death. AI is definitely here, and it wields (and uses) an alarming amount of power.

Meanwhile, artists and creators are forced to advocate for themselves and protect their work as AI notoriously copies aesthetics, threatening to take jobs and opportunities away from living creators. Year after year on Instagram, statements about AI or protecting work from AI are being made by artists, illustrators, and designers. It makes sense to feel some vigilance, especially after OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati said in an interview that the creative jobs destroyed by her company’s product maybe “shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

When new technologies are normalized, it’s easy to feel a mix of resistance to their potential negative impacts as well as worry about what could happen if you don’t get on board. The fear of being left behind is palpable, and the evolution of technology can stir that feeling up as it continues to rapidly advance. In this issue, I wanted to focus on AI because of its sudden ubiquity. I can’t go a day without hearing about it—whether it be a new development or a steady lament. What do artists and arts workers think of AI? Are they embracing it, rejecting it, or not sure what to do? How do we keep analog practices like physical print media alive as technology threatens to make it obsolete? 

These are the questions we attempt to answer in this new issue of The Journal. When I initially had the idea for an AI issue, I thought it was going to be easy to put together. However, I found myself struggling, wondering if I should try and balance out how critical I feel toward AI with some more positive outlooks. For now, my hope lies in artists whose hand remains in their work, creators who make work examining our relationship to technology, and thinkers who want to challenge the ever-changing status quo. Scroll down to check it out.