Prompt-Based Art

Mimesis, AI, and the Aesthetic Problem

Abstract

This article examines the generation of artistic materials by artificial intelligence through a central aesthetic problem: the reconfiguration of mimesis under conditions of scale, automation, and algorithmic circulation. Rather than treating AI as a creative subject or as a threat, the text frames it as technē, that is, as a set of procedures and devices that redistributes labor, decision-making, authorship, and responsibility, intensifying shifts already underway in poiēsis through practices grounded in command, iteration, and the curation of variations. The argument unfolds as a theoretical-bibliographic essay in dialogue with the Platonic matrix of suspicion toward appearance and with the Aristotelian rehabilitation of mimesis as learning and pleasure, connected to modern and contemporary debates on technical reproduction, post-photography, the post-medium condition, appropriation, and software culture. By situating prompt-based production within the artworld and within the sociotechnical infrastructures that sustain it, the article discusses ethical implications, such as process transparency, bias, data, invisible labor, and material costs, as well as class effects, including the growing valorization of the “human” and the handmade as a segregated luxury. It concludes that the decisive question lies not in attributing or denying creativity to AI, but in understanding which regimes of value, legitimation, and responsibility become dominant when mimesis is produced at scale.