Enchantment and the Gimmick: Pleasure and Doubt in AI Image Aesthetics

With its ability to subvert our perceptions of the world, AI can create images of quirky strangeness and charm, resulting in hyper‐surrealist juxtapositions of form and uncanny beauty. Founding partner of Young & Ayata and Associate Professor at the Cooper Union, New York, Michael Young investigates recent output from architect Karel Klein and her collaborators, and speculates on the power of their ‘estrangements’ and the capitalist underbelly of AI.