How Did A.I. Art Evolve? Here’s a 5,000 – Year Timeline of Artists Employing Artificial Intelligence, From the Ancient Inca to Modern-day GANs

Excerpt

Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson was working nearly concurrently with Wallace on her own chatbot as part of an artistic project commissioned by SFMOMA in 1998. Leeson had made a film called Teknolust, which involved a cyborg character with a lonely hearts column on the internet who would reach out and talk to people. Leeson wanted to create Agent Ruby in real life, and worked with 18 programmers from around the world to do so. Agent Ruby was released in 2001, and Leeson said she did not really see it as a standalone A.I. artwork at the time but more as a piece of “expanded cinema.”