Steven Zapata tackles the rise of AI-generated art and the consequences and questions this technology poses for artists and broader society. Steven Zapata has alway had a great love for drawing. From a young age, his avid sketching was fueled by a voracious appetite for video games, horror movies, science fiction novels, and pulpy paranormal reporting. A native New Yorker, his frequent visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired him to strive for the fluency and freedom of the old masters in his own imaginative work.

Shortly after high school, he moved to Los Angeles to attend Art Center College of Design and went on to work in video games, film, theme parks, and advertising. He continued his work in entertainment after moving back to New York and began teaching art, both independently and at Art Center. After a decade in commercial art, he began to reorient his focus towards online education and nurturing the love of drawing in all those attracted to it. In 2019, he began a YouTube channel where he shares video essays about the mental challenges that accompany an art practice, and where he tries to guide viewers towards the truly strange and spiritual aspects of drawing. In 2022 he published a video, “The End of Art: An Argument Against Image AIs” where he expressed his concerns about the training practices of text-to-image models. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx