Artists on a Decade of AI Evolution: An Interview Study of Affordances, Culture, and Artistic Practice with Machine Learning

In the mid-2010s, media artists began developing practices using machine learning (ML) as an artistic medium. Since 2022, the rise of large generative models, the mainstreaming of AI as consumer products, and intensifying ethical disputes have reconfigured the conditions of their artistic practice. This paper aims to understand how artists working with ML over the past decade respond to these shifts, shedding light on how practices, tools, and culture co-evolve. We address this question through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 30 artists active before 2020. Our findings show how artists experience narrowing aesthetics and reduced malleability of post-2020 ML systems, have diverging views on where to locate moral responsibility with large AI models, and face shifting cultural reception that challenges the legibility of their work. We map how artists envision their practice going forward and discuss those orientations with respect to HCI conversations on design and creativity.