BY GABRIELE DALLE LUCHE E PAOLO GARFAGNINI
Once upon a time, there was state censorship, then market censorship; today, art is discovering a more subtle and contemporary form: censorship among artists. The casus belli is Artificial Intelligence - the new scapegoat for a system that preaches creative freedom but practices ideological selection. It’s not what you do that matters, but how you do it. And if you choose the wrong tool, you’re out. The case of the 2023 art exhibition at San Francisco International Airport has become emblematic. Several AI-assisted works were contested not for their content, but for their method, with demands for removal in the name of protecting human artists. No public authority, no legal prohibition: just social, viral, and militant pressure. The institution kept the works on display, but the public trial remains open, with no right of appeal.
In Italy, the atmosphere is no different. Calls for entries and art prizes are beginning to include clauses that prohibit or limit the use of AI, often without clarifying what “use” actually means. All this occurs while positive law struggles to keep up. The Italian Copyright Law (L. 633/1941) only protects “creative works of the intellect” attributable to a physical person. Legally, AI creates nothing. Yet, it is treated as a dangerous subject - almost a clandestine author. The paradox is also evident at the European level. The recent EU AI Act does not ban the use of AI in the artistic field; it merely imposes obligations regarding transparency and risk management. No regulation mandates the exclusion of an artist who uses AI. Yet, in the art world, the sanction arrives anyway: exclusion, stigma, and delegitimation. A sort of creative soft law, applied without cross-examination.
Here, the irony turns bitter: while art has always fought against censorship, today a segment of artists is invoking it against their peers. It is no longer a matter of freedom of expression under Article 21 of the Italian Constitution, but a freedom conditioned by hardware. Creativity remains free, provided it is analog, slow, and reassuring. Perhaps the real crux is not legal, but cultural. AI does not take away rights, because it has none. It does not steal works, because the author remains human. It does, however, strip away certainties. And faced with uncertainty, art - incredibly - responds with prohibition. But history teaches us that no rule, whether written or moral, has ever truly stopped the evolution of language. If anything, it has only revealed those who were afraid to use it.
