The Illusion of the Artifact Semiotic Indexation and the Genesis of Production in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This article proposes an ontological distinction between the human artifact and the output of generative artificial intelligence systems, here designated meta-artifact, shifting the contemporarydebate from Bourdieu’s arbitrary symbolic capital toward the semiotic genesis of production.Drawing on the philosophy of aesthetics, from Plato to Pareyson, and on Lotman’s semiotics ofculture, it is argued that the artifact results from a living semiotic indexation, in which the partialoutcome reconfigures the very rule of production. With Peirce and Baudrillard, it is shown thatthe meta-artifact operates through linear indexation, restricted to the relation between commandand token, which approximates it to the status of simulacrum. Brooks’s argument on essentialcomplexity reinforces that this incapacity is structural, not contingent. The Ghibli-style trendand Miyazaki’s reaction illustrate this symptomatic distortion. An auditable criterion, groundedin the indexation chain, is proposed as an alternative to institutional debates over what countsas art.