From Aura to Algorithm: Updating Benjamin and Valéry in the Age of AI

Introduction

What happens to the essence of art when its technical foundations transform? This question preoccupied early twentieth-century thinkers faced with photography, cinema, and radio. Paul Valéry captured the stakes in 1928, noting that the fine arts, established in eras of limited human control over matter, could no longer remain untouched by scientific advancement. Walter Benjamin elaborated on this insight in his celebrated essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, arguing that reproducibility reshaped not only the form of artistic objects but also their cultural function and aura. Today, the rise of artificial intelligence compels a reconsideration of these ideas. Just as reproducibility redefined art in Benjamin’s era, algorithmic generation is now transforming creativity itself. This article traces a historical trajectory from Valéry’s prophecy through Benjamin’s theory to the contemporary moment, demonstrating how the dual structure of art—material and immaterial—continues to evolve under technological pressure.

Valéry’s Prophecy

In La conquête de l’ubiquité, Valéry observes: “In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power” (Valéry, 1964, p. 1285). The tangible aspect encompasses pigments, stone, instruments, or the human voice, while the counterpart—spiritual or conceptual—encompasses imagination, invention, and artistic form. For Valéry, advances in science were transforming the material substratum, making it impossible for the expressive or intellectual dimension to remain unchanged. He continues: “We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art” (Valéry, 1964, p. 1286). When the physical medium evolves under technological influence, the immaterial side—idea, beauty, originality—cannot remain static.

Benjamin’s Framework

Benjamin transformed Valéry’s intuition into a historical-philosophical framework. His essay, commonly known in English as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, is more precisely titled in German Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Benjamin, 2008). The distinction matters: Benjamin is concerned not merely with machines but with reproducibility as a structural condition redefining art’s ontology.

Central to his argument is the concept of aura, the unique presence of a work in time and space. The aura depends on singularity—the unrepeatable existence of a painting or the ritual function of a sculpture. Reproduction undermines this uniqueness: photographs can be copied endlessly, films screened simultaneously across continents. With this shift, art moves from cult value, tied to ritual and tradition, to exhibition value, oriented toward display and mass perception.

Benjamin radicalizes Valéry’s insight. While Valéry anticipated that new techniques would modify the conditions of art, Benjamin shows how reproducibility dismantles aura and reshapes art’s social and political functions. Film and photography are not mere extensions of older forms; they transform art’s meaning and its role in society, enabling both emancipatory and manipulative uses.

Analogy with Language

The structural parallel with linguistic theory is illuminating. In Saussure, a change in the signifier affects the signified; in Valéry, shifts in the physical medium transform the spiritual dimension; in Benjamin, reproducibility alters aura and societal function. Each case demonstrates a historically contingent duality, where meaning and form co-evolve.

If the signifier evolves—from speech to print, from print to digital text—the corresponding signified is destabilized. Similarly, as art’s material support shifts—from pigment to photograph, from film reel to digital pixel—the very notion of what counts as art becomes provisional. Benjamin’s originality lies in linking this structural instability to perception and politics: reproducible works can empower or manipulate audiences depending on their context.

Updating for the AI Age

Nearly a century later, these questions return with unprecedented intensity. Artificial intelligence transforms the material stratum of art in ways Valéry and Benjamin could scarcely anticipate. Today, the substrate of creation is often virtual: datasets, code, neural networks, and cloud computation replace stone, paint, or film reels.

The consequences for the conceptual dimension are profound. Authorship becomes distributed: is the artist the programmer, the user providing prompts, or the countless contributors whose works trained the model? Creativity is reconceived as recombination and pattern recognition across vast archives rather than solitary inspiration.

Benjamin’s concepts illuminate this landscape. Aura appears eroded: AI can generate infinite variations of style, imagery, or sound. Yet new forms of aura may emerge in the ingenuity of prompts, the curation of outputs, or the cultural resonance of widely circulated works. Exhibition value intensifies into hyper-exhibition: AI saturates social platforms with images and texts, often outpacing human attention. The political stakes are equally significant. While AI facilitates democratized creation and novel modes of artistic expression, it also enables deepfakes, synthetic persuasion, and algorithmic manipulation.

If Benjamin analyzed "the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility," today we might speak of "the work of art in the age of algorithmic reproducibility". The structural logic remains: shifts in the material foundation reverberate through the conceptual sphere, reshaping our understanding of art itself.

Conclusion

Valéry foresaw that modern science would transform both artistic technique and the notion of art. Benjamin theorized the consequences in terms of reproducibility, aura, and politics. Today, artificial intelligence continues this trajectory, challenging the dual structure of creation itself. The physical stratum has become algorithmic, the conceptual side distributed, and the very definition of art is evolving. Far from rendering Benjamin obsolete, AI confirms his insight: art is inseparable from its technical conditions. What we witness is not the conclusion of artistic development but another chapter in the ongoing dialogue between matter and meaning.

References

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings on media (M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, & T. Y. Levin, Eds.; E. Jephcott, R. Livingstone, & H. Zohn, Trans.). Harvard University Press.

Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916)

Valéry, P. (1964). Pièces sur l’art (Œuvres, Vol. 2, pp. 1283–1292). Gallimard.