Science Corporation—a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk’s brain-interface venture—has leapfrogged its rival after acquiring a vision implant that’s in advanced testing, for a fire-sale price. The implant produces a form of “artificial vision” that lets some patients read text and do crosswords, according to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine today. The implant is a microelectronic chip placed under the retina. Using signals from a camera mounted on a pair of glasses, the chip emits bursts of electricity in order to bypass photoreceptor cells damaged by macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in the elderly. “The magnitude of the effect is what’s notable,” says José-Alain Sahel, a University of Pittsburgh vision scientist who led testing of the system, which is called PRIMA. “There’s a patient in the UK and she is reading the pages of a regular book, which is unprecedented.”  
Until last year, the device was being developed by Pixium Vision, a French startup co-founded by Sahel, which faced bankruptcy after it couldn’t raise more cash.   That’s when Science Corporation swept in to purchase the company’s assets for about 4 million euros ($4.7 million), according to court filings.
“Science was able to buy it for very cheap just when the study was coming out, so it was good timing for them,” says Sahel. “They could quickly access very advanced technology that’s closer to the market, which is good for a company to have.” Science was founded in 2021 by Max Hodak, the first president of Neuralink, after his sudden departure from that company. Since its founding, Science has raised around $290 million, according to the venture capital database Pitchbook, and used the money to launch broad-ranging exploratory research on brain interfaces and new types of vision treatments. “The ambition here is to build a big, standalone medical technology company that would fit in with an Apple, Samsung or an Alphabet,” Hodak said in an interview at Science’s labs in Alameda, California in September. “The goal is to change the world in important ways…but we need to make money in order to invest in these programs.” By acquiring the PRIMA implant program, Science effectively vaulted past years of development and testing. The company has requested approval to sell the eye chip in Europe and is in discussions with regulators in the US. Unlike Neuralink’s implant, which records brain signals so paralyzed recipients can use their thoughts to move a computer mouse, the retina chip sends information into the brain to produce vision. Because the retina is an outgrowth of the brain, the chip qualifies as a type of brain-computer interface. Artificial vision systems have been studied for years and one, called the Argus II, even reached the market and was installed in the eyes of about 400 people. But that product was later withdrawn after it proved to be a money-loser, according to Cortigent, the company which now owns that technology. 38 patients in Europe received a PRIMA implant in one eye. On average, the study found, they were able to read five additional lines on a vision chart—the kind with rows of letters, each smaller than the last. Some of that improvement came due to what Sahel calls “various tricks” like using a zoom function, which allows patients to zero in on text they want to read. The type of vision loss being treated with the new implant is called geographic atrophy, in which patients have peripheral vision, but can’t make out objects directly in front of them, like words or faces. According to Prevent Blindness, an advocacy organization, this type of central vision loss affects around one in 10 people over 80.  

The implant was originally designed starting 20 years ago by Daniel Palanker, a laser expert who is now a professor at Stanford University, who says his breakthrough was realizing that light beams could supply both energy and information to a chip placed under the retina. Other implants, like Argus II, use a wire, which adds complexity. “The chip has no brains at all. It just turns light into electrical current that flows into the tissue,” says Palanker. “Patients describe the color they see as yellowish blue or sun color.” The system works using a wearable camera that records a scene, then blasts bright infrared light into the eye, using a wavelength humans can’t see. That light hits the chip, which is covered by “what are basically tiny solar panels,” says Palanker. “We just try to replace the photoreceptors with a photo-array.” A diagram of how a visual scene could be represented by a retinal implant.COURTESY SCIENCE CORPORATION The current system produces about 400 spots of vision, which lets users make out the outlines of words and objects. Palanaker says a next-generation device will have five times as many “pixels” and should let people see more. “What we discovered in the trial is that even though you stimulate individual pixels, patients perceive it as continuous. The patient says ‘I see a line’, “I see a letter.’” Palanker says it will be important to keep improving the system because “the market size depends on the quality of the vision produced.” When Pixium teetered on insolvency, Palanker says he helped search for a buyer, meeting with Hodak. “It was a fire sale, not a celebration. But for me it’s a very lucky outcome, because it means the product is going forward. And the purchase price doesn’t really matter, because there’s a big investment needed to bring it to market. It’s going to cost money,” he says.  The PRIMA artificial vision system has a battery pack/controller and an eye-mounted camera.COURTESY SCIENCE CORPORATION During a visit to Science’s headquarters, Hodak described the company’s effort to re-design the system into something sleeker and more user-friendly. In the original design, in addition to the wearable camera, the patient has to carry around a bulky controller containing a battery and laser, as well as buttons to zoom in and out.  But Science has already prototyped a version in which those electronics are squeezed into what look like an extra-large pair of sunglasses. “The implant is great, but we’ll have new glasses on patients fairly shortly,” Hodak says. “This will substantially improve their ability to have it with them all day.”  Other companies also want to treat blindness with brain-computer interfaces, but some think it might be better to send signals directly into the brain. This year, Neuralink has been touting plans for “Blindsight,” a project to send electrical signals directly into the brain’s visual cortex, bypassing the retina entirely. It has yet to test the approach in a person.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This retina implant lets people with vision loss do a crossword puzzle The news: Science Corporation—a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk’s brain-interface venture—has leapfrogged its rival after acquiring a vision implant in advanced testing for a fire-sale price. The implant produces a form of “artificial vision” that lets some patients read text and do crosswords, according to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine today.How it works: The implant is a microelectronic chip placed under the retina. Using signals from a camera mounted on a pair of glasses, the chip emits bursts of electricity in order to bypass photoreceptor cells damaged by macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in the elderly. Read the full story. —Antonio Regalado
How will flowers respond to climate change?
Flowers play a key role in most landscapes, from urban to rural areas. Yet flowers have much more to tell in their bright blooms: The very shape they take is formed by local and global climate conditions.  The form of a flower is a visual display of its climate, if you know what to look for. In a dry year, its petals’ pigmentation may change. In a warm year, the flower might grow bigger. The flower’s ultraviolet-absorbing pigment increases with higher ozone levels. Now, a new artistic project sets out to answer the question: As the climate changes in the future, how might flowers change? Read the full story. —Annelie Berner This story is from our forthcoming print issue, which is all about the body. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land. 2025 climate tech companies to watch: Redwood Materials and its new AI microgrids Over the past few years, Redwood Materials has become one of the top US battery recyclers, joining forces with the likes of Volkswagen, BMW, and Toyota to process old electric-vehicle batteries and recover materials that can be used to make new ones.Now it’s moving into reuse as well. Redwood Energy, a new branch of the company, incorporates used EV batteries into microgrids to power energy-hungry AI data centers. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall Redwood Materials is one of our 10 climate tech companies to watch—our annual list of some of the most promising climate tech firms on the planet. Check out the rest of the list here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 AWS is recovering from a major outage It’s racing to get hundreds of apps and services back online. (The Verge)+ Snapchat, Roblox and banking services are among those affected. (The Guardian)2 OpenAI made—then retracted—a claim it had made a major math breakthroughAfter math experts and rival AI firms ridiculed its poorly-worded declaration. (TechCrunch)+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review) 3 The grave costs of Trump’s war on climate scienceIt’s affecting the accuracy of forecasting systems globally, not just in the US. (FT $)+ Trump himself led an effort to derail plans to tax shipping pollution. (Politico $)+ How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states. (MIT Technology Review) 4 China claims the US is behind a cyberattack on its national time centerIt says it has years’ worth of irrefutable evidence of data stealing. (Reuters)+ US experts allegedly exploited vulnerabilities in mobile phones belonging to National Time Service Center workers. (Bloomberg $)5 Is AI-generated art real art?It’s a question gallery and museum curators across the world are debating. (NYT $)+ Artisan craftmakers are happy to resist the pull of AI. (FT $)+ This tool claims to trace how much of an AI image has been drawn from existing material. (The Guardian)+ From slop to Sotheby’s? AI art enters a new phase. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Chipmaker Nexperia has accused its ousted CEO of spreading falsehoodsZhang Xuezheng reportedly claimed it was operating independently in China. (Bloomberg $) 7 This whistleblower raised concerns about the safety of US data under DOGEAnd says the hostile reception to his complaint led to him leaving his dream job. (WP $)+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Aid agencies have been criticized for using AI “poverty porn”But the NGOs say its use protects the identities of real people in social media campaigns. (The Guardian) 9 EVs lose their value much faster than gas-powered carsWhich isn’t exactly an incentive for prospective first-time buyers. (Rest of World) 10 What happens to our brains when we dream 🧠We’re learning more about the many liminal states they can slip through. (Quanta Magazine) Quote of the day “Hoisted by their own GPTards.”
—Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun pokes fun at OpenAI after the company walked back its claim it had made a major math breakthrough in a post on X. One more thing One option for electric vehicle fires? Let them burn.Although there isn’t solid data on the frequency of EV battery fires, it’s no secret that these fires are happening.Despite that, manufacturers offer no standardized steps on how to fight them or avoid them in the first place. What’s more, with EVs, it’s never entirely clear whether the fire is truly out.Patrick Durham, the owner of one of a growing number of private companies helping first responders learn how to deal with lithium-ion battery safety, has a solution. He believes that the best way to manage EV fires right now is to let them burn. But such an approach not only goes against firefighters’ instincts—it’d require a significant cultural shift. Read the full story.

For all the modern marvels of cardiology, we struggle to predict who will have a heart attack. Many people never get screened at all. Now, startups like Bunkerhill Health, Nanox.AI, and HeartLung Technologies are applying AI algorithms to screen millions of CT scans for early signs of heart disease. This technology could be a breakthrough for public health, applying an old tool to uncover patients whose high risk for a heart attack is hiding in plain sight. But it remains unproven at scale while raising thorny questions about implementation and even how we define disease.  Last year, an estimated 20 million Americans had chest CT scans done, after an event like a car accident or to screen for lung cancer. Frequently, they show evidence of coronary artery calcium (CAC), a marker for heart attack risk, that is buried or not mentioned in a radiology report focusing on ruling out bony injuries, life-threatening internal trauma, or cancer. Dedicated testing for CAC remains an underutilized method of predicting heart attack risk. Over decades, plaque in heart arteries moves through its own life cycle, hardening from lipid-rich residue into calcium. Heart attacks themselves typically occur when younger, lipid-rich plaque unpredictably ruptures, kicking off a clotting cascade of inflammation that ultimately blocks the heart’s blood supply. Calcified plaque is generally stable, but finding CAC suggests that younger, more rupture-prone plaque is likely present too.  Coronary artery calcium can often be spotted on chest CTs, and its concentration can be subjectively described. Normally, quantifying a person’s CAC score involves obtaining a heart-specific CT scan. Algorithms that calculate CAC scores from routine chest CTs, however, could massively expand access to this metric. In practice, these algorithms could then be deployed to alert patients and their doctors about abnormally high scores, encouraging them to seek further care. Today, the footprint of the startups offering AI-derived CAC scores is not large, but it is growing quickly. As their use grows, these algorithms may identify high-risk patients who are traditionally missed or who are on the margins of care. 
Historically, CAC scans were believed to have marginal benefit and were marketed to the worried well. Even today, most insurers won’t cover them. Attitudes, though, may be shifting. More expert groups are endorsing CAC scores as a way to refine cardiovascular risk estimates and persuade skeptical patients to start taking statins.  The promise of AI-derived CAC scores is part of a broader trend toward mining troves of medical data to spot otherwise undetected disease. But while it seems promising, the practice raises plenty of questions. For example, CAC scores ­haven’t proved useful as a blunt instrument for universal screening. A 2022 Danish study evaluating a population-based program, for example, showed no benefit in mortality rates for patients who had undergone CAC screening tests. If AI delivered this information automatically, would the calculus really shift? 
And with widespread adoption, abnormal CAC scores will become common. Who follows up on these findings? “Many health systems aren’t yet set up to act on incidental calcium findings at scale,” says Nishith Khandwala, the cofounder of Bunkerhill Health. Without a standard procedure for doing so, he says, “you risk creating more work than value.”  There’s also the question of whether these AI-generated scores would actually improve patient care. For a symptomatic patient, a CAC score of zero may offer false reassurance. For the asymptomatic patient with a high CAC score, the next steps remain uncertain. Beyond statins, it isn’t clear if these patients would benefit from starting costly cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Repatha or other PCSK9-inhibitors. It may encourage some to pursue unnecessary but costly downstream procedures that could even end up doing harm. Currently, AI-derived CAC scoring is not reimbursed as a separate service by Medicare or most insurers. The business case for this technology today, effectively, lies in these potentially perverse incentives.  At a fundamental level, this approach could actually change how we define disease. Adam Rodman, a hospitalist and AI expert at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has observed that AI-derived CAC scores share similarities with the “incidentaloma,” a term coined in the 1980s to describe unexpected findings on CT scans. In both cases, the normal pattern of diagnosis—in which doctors and patients deliberately embark on testing to figure out what’s causing a specific problem—were fundamentally disrupted. But, as Rodman notes, incidentalomas were still found by humans reviewing the scans.  Now, he says, we are entering an era of “machine-based nosology,” where algorithms define diseases on their own terms. As machines make more diagnoses, they may catch things we miss. But Rodman and I began to wonder if a two-tiered diagnostic future may emerge, where “haves” pay for brand-name algorithms while “have-nots” settle for lesser alternatives.  For patients who have no risk factors or are detached from regular medical care, an AI-derived CAC score could potentially catch problems earlier and rewrite the script. But how these scores reach people, what is done about them, and whether they can ultimately improve patient outcomes at scale remain open questions. For now—holding the pen as they toggle between patients and algorithmic outputs—clinicians still matter.  Vishal Khetpal is a fellow in cardiovascular disease. The views expressed in this article do not represent those of his employers. 

Flowers play a key role in most landscapes, from urban to rural areas. There might be dandelions poking through the cracks in the pavement, wildflowers on the highway median, or poppies covering a hillside. We might notice the time of year they bloom and connect that to our changing climate. Perhaps we are familiar with their cycles: bud, bloom, wilt, seed. Yet flowers have much more to tell in their bright blooms: The very shape they take is formed by local and global climate conditions.  The form of a flower is a visual display of its climate, if you know what to look for. In a dry year, its petals’ pigmentation may change. In a warm year, the flower might grow bigger. The flower’s ultraviolet-absorbing pigment increases with higher ozone levels. As the climate changes in the future, how might flowers change?  Anthocyanins are red or indigo pigments that supply antioxidants and photoprotectants, which help a plant tolerate climate-related stresses such as droughts.© 2021 SULLIVAN CN, KOSKI MH An artistic research project called Plant Futures imagines how a single species of flower might evolve in response to climate change between 2023 and 2100—and invites us to reflect on the complex, long-term impacts of our warming world. The project has created one flower for every year from 2023 to 2100. The form of each one is data-driven, based on climate projections and research into how climate influences flowers’ visual attributes.  More ultraviolet pigment protects flowers’ pollen against increasing ozone levels.MARCO TODESCO Under unpredictable weather conditions, the speculative flowers grow a second layer of petals. In botany, a second layer is called a “double bloom” and arises from random mutations.COURTESY OF ANNELIE BERNER Plant Futures began during an artist residency in Helsinki, where I worked closely with the biologist Aku Korhonen to understand how climate change affected the local ecosystem. While exploring the primeval Haltiala forest, I learned of the Circaea alpina, a tiny flower that was once rare in that area but has become more common as temperatures have risen in recent years. Yet its habitat is delicate: The plant requires shade and a moist environment, and the spruce population that provides those conditions is declining in the face of new forest pathogens. I wondered: What if the Circaea alpina could survive in spite of climate uncertainty? If the dark, shaded bogs turn into bright meadows and the wet ground dries out, how might the flower adapt in order to survive? This flower’s potential became the project’s grounding point. 
The author studying historical Circaea samples in the Luomus Botanical Collections.COURTESY OF ANNELIE BERNER Outside the forest, I worked with botanical experts in the Luomus Botanical Collections. I studied samples of Circaea flowers from as far back as 1906, and I researched historical climate conditions in an attempt to understand how flower size and color related to a year’s temperature and precipitation patterns.  I researched how other flowering plants respond to changes to their climate conditions and wondered how the Circaea would need to adapt to thrive in a future world. If such changes happened, what would the Circaea look like in 2100?  We designed the future flowers through a combination of data-driven algorithmic mapping and artistic control. I worked with the data artist Marcin Ignac from Variable Studio to create 3D flowers whose appearance was connected to climate data. Using Nodes.io, we made a 3D model of the Circaea alpina based on its current morphology and then mapped how those physical parameters might shift as the climate changes. For example, as the temperature rises and precipitation decreases in the data set, the petal color shifts toward red, reflecting how flowers protect themselves with an increase in anthocyanins. Changes in temperature, carbon dioxide levels, and precipitation rates combine to affect the flowers’ size, density of veins, UV pigments, color, and tendency toward double bloom. 2025: Circaea alpina is ever so slightly larger than usual owing to a warmer summer, but it is otherwise close to the typical Circaea flower in size, color, and other attributes. 2064: We see a bigger flower with more petals, given an increase in carbon dioxide levels and temperature. The bull’s-eye pattern, composed of UV pigment, is bigger and messier because of an increase in ozone and solar radiation. A second tier of petals reflects uncertainty in the climate model. 2074: The flower becomes pinker, an antioxidative response to the stress of consecutive dry days and higher temperatures. Its size increases, primarily because of higher levels of carbon dioxide. The double bloom of petals persists as the climate model’s projections increase in uncertainty. 2100: The flower’s veins are densely packed, which could signal appropriation of a technique leaves use to improve water transport during droughts. It could also be part of a strategy to attract pollinators in the face of worsening air quality that degrades the transmission of scents. 2023—2100: Each year, the speculative flower changes. Size, color, and form shift in accordance with the increased temperature and carbon dioxide levels and the changes in precipitation patterns. In this 10-centimeter cube of plexiglass, the future flowers are “preserved,” allowing the viewer to see them in a comparative, layered view.COURTESY OF ANNELIE BERNER Based in Copenhagen, Annelie Berner is a designer, researcher, teacher, and artist specializing in data visualization.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. From slop to Sotheby’s? AI art enters a new phase In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can seem absurd.  But amid all the muck, there are people using AI tools with real consideration and intent. Some of them are finding notable success as AI artists: They are gaining huge online followings, selling their work at auction, and even having it exhibited in galleries and museums. Read the full story.
—Grace Huckins This story is from our forthcoming print issue, which is all about the body. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land. Plus, you’ll also receive a free digital report on nuclear power.
Take our quiz: How much do you know about antimicrobial resistance? This week we had some terrifying news from the World Health Organization: Antibiotics are failing us. A growing number of bacterial infections aren’t responding to these medicines—including common ones that affect the blood, gut, and urinary tract. Get infected with one of these bugs, and there’s a fair chance antibiotics won’t help.You’ve probably heard about antimicrobial resistance before, but how much do you know about it? Here’s our attempt to put the “fun” in “fundamental threat to modern medicine.” Test your knowledge here! —Jessica Hamzelou This article appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. 2025 climate tech companies to watch: Envision Energy and its “smart” wind turbines Envision Energy, one of China’s biggest wind turbine makers, has expanded into batteries, green hydrogen, and industrial parks designed to run heavy industry on clean power.With flagship projects in Inner Mongolia and new ventures planned abroad, the company is testing whether renewables can decarbonize sectors that electricity alone can’t reach. Read the full story.Envision Energy is one of our 10 climate tech companies to watch—our annual list of some of the most promising climate tech firms on the planet. Check out the rest of the list here.

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 ICE is beefing up its surveillance capabilities It’s recently bought iris-scanning technology, spyware and location tracking software. (WP $)+ Viral ICE videos are shaping how Americans feel about the agency. (Vox)+ Protestors in Chicago are fighting back after mass arrests in the city. (New Yorker $) 2 OpenAI has stopped people from generating videos of MLK JrAfter some people used Sora to create “disrespectful depictions” of the civil rights activist. (TechCrunch)+ It’s not the first time AI’s depiction of public figures has been criticized. (The Information $)3 A teenager is suing the owners of “nudifying” app ClothOffA classmate used an image of the New Jersey student to generate fake nudes. (WSJ $)+ Meet the 15-year-old deepfake victim pushing Congress into action. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Amazon’s Ring camera arm is signing deals with law enforcementIt’s working with Flock Safety and Axon to share footage with criminal investigations. (CNBC)+ A division of ICE has used Flock’s AI-powered surveillance network. (404 Media)+ How Amazon Ring uses domestic violence to market doorbell cameras. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as diesel carsA new report has found that pollution levels are well above official estimates. (The Guardian)+ What to expect if you’re expecting a plug-in hybrid. (MIT Technology Review) 6 South Korea is prohibiting its citizens from travelling to CambodiaIt says hundreds of its nationals have been kidnapped and forced into scam complexes. (FT $)+ Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there. (MIT Technology Review)
7 What it’s like to be trans online in 2025The internet once helped trans people to connect—now it’s being weaponized against them. (The Verge) 8 Generative AI will make you the star of adsCompanies have to make returns on all that AI investment somehow. (NY Mag $)
9 San Francisco’s AI companies are pushing up housing pricesRents are rising in a city already renowned for a staggeringly high cost of living. (NYT $) 10 Samsung is making a tri-folding phoneBut attendees at the event it’s being shown off at won’t be allowed to touch it. (Bloomberg $) Quote of the day “Grandma will be thrown off the Internet because Junior illegally downloaded a few songs on a visit.” —US broadband provider Cox Communications details a potential scenario in a legal case filed by major record labels, which have accused Cox of failing to disconnect people who are illegally downloading music, Ars Technica reports. 
One more thing An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scaryUntil now, AI-generated videos of people have tended to have some stiffness, glitchiness, or other unnatural elements that make them pretty easy to differentiate from reality.For the past several years, AI video startup Synthesia has produced these kinds of AI-generated avatars. But back in April 2024, it launched a new generation, its first to take advantage of the latest advancements in generative AI, and they are more realistic and expressive than anything we’ve seen before.  We tested it out by making an AI clone of Melissa Heikkilä, our former senior AI reporter. Read the full story and check out the synthetic version of Melissa.
We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + As support winds down for Windows 10 this week, did you know its blue Windows icon desktop image was taken from a real photograph? Take a look behind the scenes.+ Rest in power Ace Frehley, Kiss cofounder and undisputed guitar hero.+ A week spent eating along France’s 385-mile food trail? Yes please.+ As we get into the Halloween spirit, dare you tour America’s spookiest cities?

In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can seem absurd: What possible artistic value is there to be found in the likes of Shrimp Jesus and Ballerina Cappuccina? But amid all the muck, there are people using AI tools with real consideration and intent. Some of them are finding notable success as AI artists: They are gaining huge online followings, selling their work at auction, and even having it exhibited in galleries and museums.  “Sometimes you need a camera, sometimes AI, and sometimes paint or pencil or any other medium,” says Jacob Adler, a musician and composer who won the top prize at the generative video company Runway’s third annual AI Film Festival for his work Total Pixel Space. “It’s just one tool that is added to the creator’s toolbox.”  One of the most conspicuous features of generative AI tools is their accessibility. With no training and in very little time, you can create an image of whatever you can imagine in whatever style you desire. That’s a key reason AI art has attracted so much criticism: It’s now trivially easy to clog sites like Instagram and TikTok with vapid nonsense, and companies can generate images and video themselves instead of hiring trained artists. Henry Daubrez created these visuals for a bitcoin NFT titled The Order of Satoshi, which sold at Sotheby’s for $24,000.COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Henry Daubrez, an artist and designer who created the AI-generated visuals for a bitcoin NFT that sold for $24,000 at Sotheby’s and is now Google’s first filmmaker in residence, sees that accessibility as one of generative AI’s most positive attributes. People who had long since given up on creative expression, or who simply never had the time to master a medium, are now creating and sharing art, he says. 
But that doesn’t mean the first AI-generated masterpiece could come from just anyone. “I don’t think [generative AI] is going to create an entire generation of geniuses,” says Daubrez, who has described himself as an “AI-assisted artist.” Prompting tools like DALL-E and Midjourney might not require technical finesse, but getting those tools to create something interesting, and then evaluating whether the results are any good, takes both imagination and artistic sensibility, he says: “I think we’re getting into a new generation which is going to be driven by taste.”  Kira Xonorika’s Trickster is the first piece to use generative AI in the Denver Art Museum’s permanent collection.COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Even for artists who do have experience with other media, AI can be more than just a shortcut. Beth Frey, a trained fine artist who shares her AI art on an Instagram account with over 100,000 followers, was drawn to early generative AI tools because of the uncanniness of their creations—she relished the deformed hands and haunting depictions of eating. Over time, the models’ errors have been ironed out, which is part of the reason she hasn’t posted an AI-generated piece on Instagram in over a year. “The better it gets, the less interesting it is for me,” she says. “You have to work harder to get the glitch now.” Beth Frey’s Instagram account @sentientmuppetfactory features uncanny AI creations.COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Making art with AI can require relinquishing control—to the companies that update the tools, and to the tools themselves. For Kira Xonorika, a self-described “AI-collaborative artist” whose short film Trickster is the first generative AI piece in the Denver Art Museum’s permanent collection, that lack of control is part of the appeal. “[What] I really like about AI is the element of unpredictability,” says Xonorika, whose work explores themes such as indigeneity and nonhuman intelligence. “If you’re open to that, it really enhances and expands ideas that you might have.” But the idea of AI as a co-creator—or even simply as an artistic medium—is still a long way from widespread acceptance. To many people, “AI art” and “AI slop” remain synonymous. And so, as grateful as Daubrez is for the recognition he has received so far, he’s found that pioneering a new form of art in the face of such strong opposition is an emotional mixed bag. “As long as it’s not really accepted that AI is just a tool like any other tool and people will do whatever they want with it—and some of it might be great, some might not be—it’s still going to be sweet [and] sour,” he says.