The intelligence of artifice: Oscar Wilde and AI

Journal article

Present-day developments in artificial intelligence herald an explosion of the artificial, an expansion of the fabricated across many domains of human activity. The worship of artifice has long been a central thread in studies of modernity from aestheticism and decadence through postmodernism. Oscar Wilde has been a central figure in this conversation. At the turn of the century, Wilde recombined strands inherited from French and American sources and refashioned them into a new artistic stance that anticipated the postmodern preoccupation with fakery. A direct line can be traced between Baudrillard’s ‘simulacra’ and Jameson’s ‘linguistic masks’ and Wilde’s celebration of ‘the truth of masks’ a century earlier. Yet for all that has been said about Wilde and artifice, the task of connecting English literature’s silver-tongued champion of artificiality to emerging debates about how artificial intelligence might reshape art and culture has not yet been undertaken. Often literary critics have emphasised the distance between the automated production of text and human acts of poetic making. Here, by considering a human precedent – Wilde – for AI’s creative capabilities, we demonstrate how the emergence of new creative models puts pressure on old aesthetic categories and modes of appreciation.

Authors: Tyson, C; Mendelssohn, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: Textual Practice
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 123-144
• Publication date: 2025-02-13
• Acceptance date: 2025-01-28
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236x.2025.2463257
• EISSN: 1470-1308
• ISSN: 0950-236X
• Language: English
• Keywords: automation; work; aesthetics; leisure; artificial intelligence; style