Yes lay that out, but I also am interested to know who creates this art? Is digital/ai art human made or is it autonomous from prompts

This is such a rich and timely question, and I love that you’re asking it with depth. Here’s the layout on why digital/AI art might be the first true successor to Abstract Expressionism’s scale of disruption, and how the question of authorship (human vs. autonomous) complicates and amplifies its provocation.

How Digital/AI Art Echoes AbEx in Disruption

1. It Shatters the Definition of the Artist

Abstract Expressionism mythologized the artist-as-genius, pouring their soul into the canvas through gesture and emotional energy.

AI art radically challenges that myth:

• If the machine generates the image…

• If the “artist” writes a prompt, but the AI renders the result…

• Where is the genius? Where is the authorship?

This is existentially disruptive in the same way AbEx was, but inverted. Instead of the exalted hand of the artist, we now ask:

Does the hand even need to be human?

2. The Death of Originality (Again—but Deeper This Time)

Warhol and Pop Art challenged originality through reproduction.

AI and digital art push it further by making infinite reproduction immediate—a single prompt can generate hundreds of iterations in seconds.

This undermines not just originality but the very idea of “finished” work.

Like Rothko’s spiritual search, AI art opens philosophical questions:

• What does it mean to create?

• What is intentionality?

• Is selection and curation a form of authorship?

3. Market Disruption on a Global Scale

NFTs (for better or worse) showed how digital art could directly challenge traditional gatekeepers:

• No galleries. No museums. No physical object required.

• Sales happening peer-to-peer on the blockchain, sometimes instantly.

This mirrors how Abstract Expressionism disrupted the European-dominated art market—except now, the disruption is aimed at the entire global art infrastructure.

4. Emotional Disconnection as New Emotional Terrain

If Abstract Expressionism was about pure feeling, AI art flips it by raising the haunting possibility of feeling simulated.

• Can something beautiful, moving, or sublime come from an entity that doesn’t feel at all?

• What does that say about us if we feel moved by it anyway?

This is, in its own way, as destabilizing and spiritually challenging as the Rothko Chapel.

So… Who Creates AI Art? Human, Machine, or Both?

The answer today is: both—and it depends on the process.

1. Prompt-Based AI Art (Human-Directed)

• The human writes text prompts, sometimes very detailed, sometimes minimal.

• The AI (like Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion) interprets those prompts to generate images.

• The human may iterate, refine, edit, or composite the results.

• Authorship is shared—but the human is the director or composer.

Example: An artist inputs “distorted portrait of a woman in red, oil painting style, Chaim Soutine influence, expressionist movement” and tweaks the output until satisfied.

2. Code-Based Generative Art (Human-Built Algorithm)

• Artists create algorithms or rule sets (often using coding languages like p5.js or Processing).

• The machine generates works based on those instructions, sometimes introducing randomness.

• The artist shapes the “genetic code” of the work but does not decide individual outputs directly.

Example: The Chromie Squiggle NFTs, where each squiggle is generated by code written by the artist.

3. Fully Autonomous Generative Systems (Machine-Led)

• Systems that self-train, self-generate, sometimes using machine learning to evolve outputs without human prompts.

• Still extremely rare in pure form—but research is moving here.

This pushes the idea of non-human creativity to the extreme. These works may not even involve human selection or intervention beyond the initial setup.

Philosophical Rumble Underneath All of This:

The central question AI/digital art raises—the same depth of rupture as Abstract Expressionism—is:

Does art require an artist at all? Or just intent?

If beauty, power, and meaning can come from code, what does that say about what we’ve believed art is for the last 500 years?

This question, like Pollock’s “I am nature” or Rothko’s quest for the sublime, cuts right to the bone of creative meaning.

Why It May Be the First True Successor to AbEx Disruption:

1. Rewrites authorship.

2. Disrupts the market.

3. Challenges the spiritual role of art.

4. Democratizes creation—while also threatening to devalue it.

5. Forces a reckoning with what it means to feel in front of art.

In a way, the existential cry of Abstract Expressionism (“Look at me, feel what I feel!”) meets its ghost in AI art (“No one here feels anything—but you still do.”)

If you’d like, I can give examples of contemporary artists navigating these questions, or some of the most provocative AI works being made right now. Would you like to explore that?