What is the role of creative labor in the age of artificial intelligence? How does an artist balance the use of AI and traditional manual labor? Zhang Xiaoli’s latest work circles around these questions through a creative interaction with AI and its generative mechanism.

She partners with the generative AI Midjourney and delegates parts of her creative process to it with experimental enthusiasm. She would first upload three to four of her paintings, along with a prompt; then the AI would learn her style, theme, and genre and generate a dozen drafts, from which the artist would select the best ones. Then, using digital painting apps, Zhang would reorganize these images, followed by edits and restructuring, during which her previous non-AI works might also be included in the picture as collages. The product of such a process is an image that simulates the artist's style and subject matter, fills the frame with geometric motifs that lack the artist's graphic logic. The system paints like another mind that understands Zhang's ideas in an alternative way.

Instead of praising its futuristic potential or fear-mongering about its threats to creative labor, Zhang’s AI art presents an experiment that explores the possibility and method of working with AI in creative production. Through familiar subject matters in her oeuvre, such as plants, landscapes, and celestial bodies, and AI-generated geometric shapes, the artist leaves the traces of this experiment visible on the surface, inviting us to critically imagine the potentials of artistic collaboration with AI.

人工智能时代创作者的角色是什么样的？一个艺术家该如何平衡对人工智能的使用和亲手创作？张小黎的近作通过与人工智能及其生成机制的创意互动讨论了这些问题。

她和生成型人工智能软件Midjourney合作，带着试验的热情将她的部分创作工序分给了AI。创作时，她会先上传三到四张她之前的作品以及一个指令。之后AI会学习她的风格、主题、和意象，并创作出十几个稿件，她会从中选出最理想的一个。之后，她会用数字绘画软件把图像排列组合，并加以编辑和重组。她也会将前作以拼贴的方式加入AI作品中。这个创作过程产出的是一个模仿小黎的图像，充满了缺乏画家本来的图像逻辑的几何形状。AI系统像是在创作中用另一种方式理解了小黎的意思。

张小黎既不夸大人工智能的未来潜能也不宣扬其对创作者的威胁，而是探讨与之合作的可能性与方法。通过例如植物、山水、和天体等在她作品中常见的意象与AI生成的几何图形的结合，艺术家让她实验的痕迹在画面上清晰可见，邀请我们批判地畅想与人工智能的艺术合作。