{"id":29248,"date":"2024-11-15T18:49:28","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T18:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sineglossa.it\/?p=29248"},"modified":"2025-09-30T09:32:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T09:32:18","slug":"who-is-the-author-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sineglossa.it\/en\/news-en\/who-is-the-author-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is the author in the age of Artificial Intelligence?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The rise of artificial intelligence and its ability to generate creative works poses new questions about the notion of authorship. Who is the author of a painting created by an algorithm, or of a poem generated by a linguistic model? The conference <\/span>Che cos’\u00e8 un autore – Creare con le intelligenze artificiali generative<\/i><\/b> (What is an author – creating with generative AI)\u00a0 held in Bologna on September 25th, organised with<\/span>\u00a0CINECA as part of the GRIN STARTS <\/strong>and European Digital Deal<\/strong> projects co-funded by the European Union, offered a valuable contribution to this debate, bringing together experts from different disciplines to explore the philosophical, legal and artistic implications of this new frontier.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

The conference topics\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
Authorship is an evolving concept\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The talk by Professor Leghissa emphasised the implications on a philosophical level. On the one hand, he highlighted the fact that cybernetic machines show the technical and combinatory nature of our language and artistic-literary production, expanding the types of artefacts with which human beings have co-evolved. For, as Leghissa argues, although machines do not think, human beings behave as if they were thinking, and, despite the absence of the \u2018agency\u2019 of artificial intelligence – which should make us refer to a \u2018cybernetic machine\u2019 and not an \u2018intelligent machine\u2019 -, such softwares are nonetheless capable of creating works with meaning, as Calvino had already noted in 1967, in the well-known essay <\/span>Cibernetica e Fantasmi<\/span><\/i> (Cybernetics and Ghosts).<\/span><\/p>

On the other hand, throughout his talk, Leghissa places the question of authorship in the more general context of social and institutional dynamics. He emphasises how the cybernetic machine, like all the technological objects that inhabit our ecological niche, is part of a control apparatus, the same one within which the discourses of art and literature are produced, which determine the spaces of freedom with which the author can make use of the new technologies. Thus, in this context, \u2018building margins of freedom\u2019, says Leghissa, \u2018I believe depends only on us as citizens of democratic countries, who cherish the liberating and emancipatory value that art has always had\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
On artistic and intellectual property in the digital age\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The talk by Professor Francesca Lagioia addresses the legal and conceptual issues associated with the idea of the creative capacity of artificial intelligences. First of all, she raises the issue of the different types of creativity that exist: <\/span>combinatory<\/b> creativity (combining known elements in new ways); <\/span>exploratory <\/b>creativity (innovating within an existing pattern, as in the case of Mozart’s Requiem); and <\/span>transformative<\/b> creativity (creating a new conceptual field, as was the case with impressionism), a type, the latter, that AI does not currently possess.<\/span><\/p>

On a legal basis, the debate on the creation of works of art through artificial intelligence, Lagioia points out, has to be tackled on two levels: 1) whether and how copyright-protected data can be used to train AI models; 2) whether and how AI can imitate not only specific works but also the \u2018artistic personality\u2019 of an author. Regarding the first matter, on the one hand, requiring consent would help authors benefit from their works; on the other hand, requiring consent would make the development of AI models more costly and less accessible for those who are less wealthy, consolidating the monopoly of a few large tech companies.<\/span><\/p>

As for the second topic, it opens up the question of a possible competition between artists and a \u2018digital doppelg\u00e4nger\u2019, which would risk mimicking human creativity – as shown in 2016 by Microsoft’s experiment The Next Rembrandt – opening up the debate on the need for new concepts, such as those of \u2018artistic identity or personality rights\u2019, in addition to copyright.<\/span><\/p>

The European regulation, particularly the <\/span>AI Act<\/b>, includes the <\/span>right of objection<\/b> for authors (<\/span>text and data mining<\/span><\/i>), but this would entail the need to retrain models from scratch in case an author objects, a highly complex and costly operation. The discussion, Lagioia concludes, highlights the need for a balance between the rights of authors and the technical practicality of such regulations, especially for language models also used in non-creative contexts.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
Authorship and Accountability\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

In the third talk, Professor Maurizio Lana went over some historical reflections on the nature of authorship, pointing out that this historical era was not the first to deal with the complexity of the subject. St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio in the Middle Ages already distinguished various roles (scribe, compiler, commentator, author) for those who produced texts.\u00a0 In this sense, AI can be seen as a continuation of this debate, and not as a clean break from the past. The new issues that authorial identity raises in relation to digital tools are, for instance, the importance of establishing clear accountability. In a world where AI participates in the creation of content, who is held accountable? \u2018If we divorce authorship from the human subject, who will we hold accountable for what has been written? To an artefact or to the person who used it?\u2019 wonders Lana. In the humanistic field, there is a tendency of considering AI as endowed with a kind of autonomous creativity, but this could lead to reducing the human being to a \u2018fungible machine\u2019, similar to the AI systems that the human being has created: according to Lana, it is thus necessary to maintain a distinction between the human subject and the machine, and to consider technology as a writing tool, rather than an independent author. Recalling Maurizio Ferraris’ concept of documental responsibility, according to which every document should have a responsible party, in a society such as ours, which is based on documents (contracts, certificates, etc.), attributing authorship to AI systems could create a society in which the concept of personal responsibility is blurred, or distributed in an unclear way.<\/span><\/p>

As for the second topic, it opens up the question of a possible competition between artists and a \u2018digital doppelg\u00e4nger\u2019, which would risk mimicking human creativity – as shown in 2016 by Microsoft’s experiment The Next Rembrandt – opening up the debate on the need for new concepts, such as those of \u2018artistic identity or personality rights\u2019, in addition to copyright.<\/span><\/p>

The European regulation, particularly the <\/span>AI Act<\/b>, includes the <\/span>right of objection<\/b> for authors (<\/span>text and data mining<\/span><\/i>), but this would entail the need to retrain models from scratch in case an author objects, a highly complex and costly operation. The discussion, Lagioia concludes, highlights the need for a balance between the rights of authors and the technical practicality of such regulations, especially for language models also used in non-creative contexts.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
Human creativity as a historical and collective phenomenon\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Francesco D’Isa goes on to recall how the invention of photography had already raised concerns about authorship, leading the society of the time to question whether the author was the photographer, or the camera. AI represents just one of the forms of automation that human beings have always used to extend their creative abilities. Just like the use of perspective in the Renaissance, automation, although lacking agency and intentionality, has its own, autonomous form of life, which transcends man’s use of that automation, and to which the artist delegates part of their work. Authorship, D’Isa notes, is a cultural illusion, particularly rooted in Western society, which tends to idealise the author as an independent creative figure. But the author is not so much a single creative entity as a collective and historical phenomenon: every work of human genius is intrinsically collective, the result of a combination of cultural, social and material influences. The fact that there is a need to identify an single author serves more the needs of responsibility and economic remuneration than a real ontological distinction. Still on this provocation, D’Isa then asks why the authorial role is so important for our society: \u2018The illusion of individual authorship is a reassurance that we employ in order to recognise the human being as the creator of his own destiny and his own works, to avoid recognising the mechanics of our acts and our thinking\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
AI to exceed the limits of human imagination\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Artist Roberto Fassone, on the other hand, tackled the topic of authorship by sharing the experimental and personal approach through which he uses artificial intelligence in his artistic production. In his work, he says, AI is not a technical tool for achieving predetermined results, but a medium, a channel that allows contact with unknown dimensions, similar to a bridge between different worlds. This point of view recalls an almost \u2018spiritual\u2019 or \u2018esoteric\u2019 practice in interacting with AI, which goes beyond its mere technical use. By using poetic and metaphorical prompts in AI such as Midjourney, Fassone was able to obtain images that seemed to emerge from a different \u2018frequency\u2019 – \u2018I was in a kind of s\u00e9ance with the machine,\u2019 he reports.\u00a0 According to his experience, AI could help us overcome the limits of our imagination, by creating new forms of expression and new ways of feeling and interpreting the world.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
AI as co-choreographer and performer\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Also in the context of exploring how authors understand their role in the creative relationship with non-human authors such as artificial intelligences, during the conference artist Kamilia Kard illustrated her relationship with AI through a project entitled Herbarium Dancing for an AI. The project shows an AI acting as a \u2018choreographer\u2019, interpreting and translating human movements into new forms. At first, the author attempted to accurately transfer the dancers’ movements to a digital environment (in the Roblox metaverse); during the process, errors, unexpected variations and movements that neither the artist nor the dancers had imagined occurred. The artist’s role was then to take these errors as the representation of a kind of AI authorship, and transforming them into an artistic element. At this point, Kard passed these movements to the dancers, asking them to learn the choreography that the AI had generated, and applied it to the digital plants in the project, trying to maintain their \u2018plant nature\u2019. To make the plants compatible with human movements, she created an anthropomorphised version that evolved into a kind of inter-species dance. With this project, Kard showed the possibility of a \u2018mediating\u2019 and \u2018co-choreographing\u2019 AI that, by interacting with human and plant elements, went beyond the original artistic intention, opening up new expressive possibilities.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
Authorship as a Filter of our Collective Imagination\n\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

And finally, writer Wu Ming 2 emphasised that authorship is often a process of elaboration rather than an act of absolute creation: the author chooses, re-elaborates and re-interprets the collective imagination, filtering common influences and references into a work, with the intention of producing a \u2018new\u2019 text. In this process, as long as the author is human, it is possible to trace the origin of the information and references used in a work.<\/span><\/p>

This traceability is lost when using AI systems, as it is difficult to clearly identify the sources and origin of the material used for the training. Regarding the discussion on the intention and the production of meaning by works created with AI, according to Wu Ming 2, the meaning depends on human intentionality, which is missing in a machine. Other questions open up regarding the issue of work, on an ethical and economic level, because there is a widespread tendency to devalue human work when it is the result of collaborations with machines. Furthermore, the intensive use of AI, especially in creative processes, requires a great deal of energy, contributing to a significant environmental impact. This aspect represents a hidden cost of working with machines, often overlooked in the debate on AI and creativity.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Relive the conference\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

The conference speakers\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
Giovanni Leghissa <\/h5><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/path><\/svg><\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/path><\/svg><\/span>\n\t\t<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/summary>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Giovanni Leghissa<\/strong> (Trieste, 1964) is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin. Editor of \u2018aut aut\u2019 and director of the online philosophy magazine \u2018Philosophy Kitchen\u2019. He has taught philosophy at the Universities of Vienna, Trieste, and at the Hochschule f\u00fcr Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. His publications include:\u00a0L’inconscio e il trascendentale. Saggi tra filosofia e psicoanalisi <\/span><\/i>(Orthotes, Napoli-Salerno 2022);<\/span> Per la critica della ragione europea. Riflessioni sulla spiritualit\u00e0 illuminista <\/span><\/i>(Mimesis, Milano 2019);<\/span> (con G. Becchio) <\/span>The Origins of Neoliberalism<\/span><\/i> (Routledge, London 2016);<\/span> Postumani per scelta. Verso un’ecosofia dei collettivi<\/span><\/i> (Mimesis, Milano 2015); <\/span>Neoliberalismo. Un’introduzione critica<\/span><\/i> (Mimesis, Milano 2012). <\/span>Incorporare l’antico. Filologia classica e invenzione della modernit\u00e0<\/span><\/i> (Mimesis, Milano 2007). <\/span>Il gioco dell’identit\u00e0. Differenza, alterit\u00e0, rappresentazione<\/span><\/i> (Mimesis, Milano 2005). He edited, with Enrico Manera, the volume <\/span>Filosofie del mito nel Novecento<\/span><\/i> (Carocci, Roma 2015). His investigations focus on: phenomenology, psychoanalysis, epistemology of economics, epistemology of the human sciences (with particular reference to anthropology, history of religions, classical philology and biblical philology), philosophy of the post-human, philosophy of technology, the relationship between religion and modernity, contemporary Jewish thought, intercultural philosophy, Postcolonial and Gender Studies.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/details>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
Maurizio Lana <\/h5><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/path><\/svg><\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/path><\/svg><\/span>\n\t\t<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/summary>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Maurizio Lana<\/strong> is Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Eastern Piedmont. He co-directs the digital library of Late Latin digilibLT with Alice Borgna. He is a founding member of AIUCD (Association for Humanistic Informatics and Digital Culture). He served on the AIUCD board from 2011 to 2017; and then from 2020 to 2023. He served on the steering committee of EADH (European Association of Digital Humanities) from 2012 to 2018. He served on the steering committee of ADHO (Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations) from 2014 to 2020 as Chair of the Multilingualism and Multiuculturalism Standing Committee. Recent publications on artificial intelligence and authorship include:<\/p>