AI: Scope and limitations in semiotics applied to the visual arts

Abstract

For the visual arts, semiotics is a working tool used to generate meaning in artworks through signs such as colors and shapes, creating artistic symbols that communicate messages on various levels of language, including interpretation and critique. The arrival of generative Artificial Intelligence, and its more widespread use in recent years, modifies creative processes, as well as those derived from semiotic content. However, the interpreter remains a core element of semiosis, and this element is neither modified nor disappears. The interpreter's pragmatic contributions are sensitivity and experience. The incorporation of AI is disrupting the practices of the disciplines in which it is embedded, redefining phenomena and transforming them wherever it is implemented. It functions as a tool to support creative or interpretive processes. It does not go beyond this because it lacks intention, consciousness, or morality. Nevertheless, it is essential to strengthen semiotics in its critical and dialogical aspects to overcome the ethical challenges it faces.