Return to Saussure

Introduction The rise of artificial intelligence as a creative medium has unsettled our categories of art, authenticity, and reproduction. Unlike earlier technologies that reproduced existing works, generative systems fabricate images from prompts, data, and algorithms, without an identifiable origin. This development invites a reconsideration of Walter Benjamin’s reflections on mechanical reproduction, Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra. Together, these perspectives clarify that AI does not merely extend the trajectory of reproduction but inaugurates a new mode of cultural production, one that transcends aura, origin, and reference. Benjamin and the Crisis of Aura Walter Benjamin’s landmark essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936/1969) distinguished between manual copying and technological reproduction. Copying by hand—whether by apprentices, scribes, or forgers—produced singular versions of an image, al...