This approach is ingenious— artificial art!—but is it a paradigm-breaking leap forward, or a massive regurgitation of past achievements? Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, told the New Yorker in July: “There was this belief that creativity is this deeply special, only-human thing.” Was is the operative word.

DALL-E depends on art already made, on photos already taken, aesthetic assumptions statistically derived, and a language—our language—formed over the centuries by acts of communication innumerable about whose nature the great machine knows nothing. It’s largely a cultural-mining operation with a clever assembly line on top. It’s perhaps no coincidence that its name refers to a famous practitioner of surrealism whose work was distinctively suited to reproductions (and look alike variations) on a singularly large scale.

I’ve witnessed this trick before. …

Forever separate from consequence and meaning, reaching, eternally reaching, yet never grasping, it is both a picture of damnation and a tool for producing more such pictures, ad nauseam. It will surely become more ingenious and proficient in its mimicry, to the point of completely disguising its machinations through extrapolation and rearrangement. But the effects will only fool the eyes. The mind’s eye watches from a deeper place, intuitive and ancient, and it will bear queasy witness to the truth that artificial art is merely that.