Today we feature another addition to our Psychedelic Café series. This time exploring what art means and what the meaning of art might become in a growing era of ai generated art-like images flooding the mindspace of humanity through consumptive digital media channels. The cafe is a curated collection of participants who, through a structure series of rounds, explore together a single question. The question we are exploring is: What does the meaning of art look like in an era of increasingly-accessible AI art generators with increasingly powerful capacities for fidelity and complexity? And our guests are Autumn Skye, Simon Haiduk, Evan Bartholomew (aka Bluetech), Martina Hoffman, Chor Boogie, Dan De Santos, and Michael Phillip. ... For links to our guests' work, full bios and show notes, and a link to watch this episode in video, head to bit.ly/PsyCafe11 *** FULL TOPICS BREAKDOWN BELOW**   SUPPORT THE PODCAST Patreon: https://patreon.com/jameswjesso Paypal Donation: https://www.paypal.com/biz/fund?id=383635S3BKJVS Merchandise:  https://www.jameswjesso.com/shop/ More Options: https://www.jameswjesso.com/support Newsletter:  https://www.jameswjesso.com/newsletter Telgram Channel:  https://t.me/jameswjesso *** Extra BIG thanks to my patrons on Patreon for helping keep this podcast alive! Especially my $23+ patrons, Andreas D, Ian C, Yvette FC, Alex F, Eliz C, Nick M, Michelle M, Joe A, Naci BF, & Heartwood Mushrooms ——  ***** Episode Breakdown (0:00) Opening (2:18) Overture (7:36) Patreon thanks (8:33) Participant Introductions (15:49) Introducing the question: (17:27) Ai art is inevitable (19:32) Ai as a bypass of the raw creative process (23:52) Ai art prompting as a kind of compulsion/binge (27:22) Ai isn’t art but something entirely new; the birth of a new god (29:32) The legal and ethical questions around ai use of artists’ work without consent (34:14) Ai meets our cultural compulsion to consume, rather than truly create (35:55) A spiritual way to work with Ai art as ceremony; image generation vs making art (40:39) A flood of ai art generators culturally downgrading the monetary value of actual art (43:00) The spiritual harm of ai art generation (46:04) If artists feel threatened by Ai, then they need to step up their game (51:33) Resisting the pull towards living a solely digital life by doubling down on the physical act of creation (1:01:34) Ai art generators as a new archetypal container for reality (1:02:50) How ai art generators work; the latent space (1:06:43) If art alters consciousness, what quality of consciousness is ai art cultivating in us? (1:11:55) “The ai does not copy anything from the image” (1:16:39) Losing our connection to nature and our humanity in favour of a transhumanist fallacy (1:21:49) A heated exchange on being “transparent” about artists using digital tools (1:31:15) Trending novel technologies as a platform for massive shadow projection (1:32:51) The danger of human creativity being atrophied due to the ease of access of digital content (1:36:26) The dishonesty of not claiming when art is made through digital means (1:40:59) Ai art generators as a means to satisfy our need to create, without having to leave the easy consumption of digital content (1:45:11) We need human creativity, even for ai art to be worthwhile (1:46:21) Artistic editing vs artistic creation (1:49:13) The dilution of the power of art by a deluge of ai content (1:52:53) Closing thoughts on this conversation (1:54:25) Ai art generators as an avenue for non-creative people to explore the creation of beautiful images (1:58:33) Learning faith through the process of artistic creation (and the journey of life) (2:02:59) Do we choose to surrender our souls to the matrix of digital novelty or stay in the light of a higher principle? (2:05:05) An expression of hope for us to remember our humanity in the face of ongoing technological novelty (2:10:26) Wondering about intentions, psychedelics, and resisting the pull to getting locked