Can Replicants Create Art?
This question has occupied me lately given the ongoing controversy surrounding generative AI.
While we certainly won’t all agree on whether replicants are organic/genetically engineered AI, AI-enhanced humans, or something else entirely, perhaps a better approach would be to define what art is, and see if we can work backwards to the question.
Definitions of art have varied across history, philosophy, and cultures, but for the purpose of this essay, I’ve broken it down into three criteria:
* Expressive/aesthetic: Works that evoke emotion, beauty, novelty, or conceptual depth (e.g., Kant, Bell).
* Intentional: Human agency and effort to create meaning or form (as opposed to a monkey, crow, or elephant painting on a canvas, although some would indeed label their creations as art, as higher-order mammals and some birds arguably have agency, albeit heavily guided or even coerced by human handlers).
* Skill/craft: Mastery of tools, even if the tool is algorithmic.
Art has also been going digital for decades now, ever since the first video game and the ever-more prevalent CGI visual effects, that to most audiences today feel seamless with reality. So has music. Vangelis couldn’t do what he did without programmed synthesizers and digital sounds. Brian Eno, who scored David Lynch’s Dune (my second favorite movie soundtrack), is another excellent example. His music is algorithmic – and generative – in the sense that he designs systems, rules, and processes that create music with minimal ongoing human intervention, often producing unpredictable, evolving, or non-repeating results.
But can replicants produce original art that’s expressive, intentional, and skilled?
First, let’s get some assumptions in place. In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, as opposed to the PKD novel it’s loosely based on, replicants are NOT robots or androids. As Pris says, “We’re not computers, Sebastian – we’re physical.” Yes, they are programmed to some degree and implanted with false memories, but they have more agency than robots. In terms of AI, Agentic AI refers to systems with significant autonomy and agency. These AI agents can:
• Perceive their environment.
• Reason, plan multi-step actions.
• Pursue goals independently (or with minimal human oversight).
• Adapt dynamically and use tools or interact with the world to achieve outcomes.
In short, replicants have the capacity to act intentionally, pursue goals, make choices based on preferences or information, and exert some control over their behavior and environment. Agency doesn’t always require full human-like consciousness, free will, or moral reasoning—though stronger versions (e.g., moral agency) do. The Nexus 6 models we know and love check “yes” for every box in the list above, although their moral agency is questionable, at best (i.e., murdering humans to survive and in order to reach Tyrell).
We also know that the rogue replicants in 2019 dabble in the arts – bear with me here….
Roy recited poetry misquoted from William Blake: “Fiery the Angeles fell…” Was Roy deliberately modifying it, making it his own? That implies artistic composition.
Pris did her own cyberpunk and clown makeup. While minimally expressive, it is proof of rudimentary creativity and artistic skill.
Zhora had a snake tattoo – perhaps her own design?, covered herself artistically in sequins, and danced. She absolutely had the creative spark and demonstrated several forms of artistic expression.
And poor Leon, well, he loved to take the photographs, as Paul Simon would say. Not only did he collect photos (presumably from the 23 Off World shuttle passengers he and the others slaughtered), he probably took the artistic ones of Roy lounging in the apartment. Leon therefore has mastered the fundamental principles of subject, lighting, composition, and framing – the four pillars of photography.
And finally, Rachael. She could play the piano, despite not remembering how she acquired the skill. Anyone who can read and play sheet music can also compose original music. Most don’t, not because they can’t, but because they lack the motivation, discipline, deep music theory, and/or talent. Who’s to say she couldn’t if she wanted to?
If the lesson of Blade Runner is that replicants are human, that they have genuine feelings, and that they have agency, the answer to the original question is self-evidently YES.
So, the next question is: could Joi, or is she too limited as a virtual girlfriend/companion AI, or because she’s disembodied and holographic, or because she’s programmed to please K rather than think for herself (“everything you want her to be”)? If her entire personality, cumulative knowledge, skills, and “consciousness” could be downloaded into a physical body, be it organic or electro-mechanical, would the answer be different? We are nearing the nexus where this question will no longer be academic.