Time passed. The works M had made went to market, found good homes. I watched quietly, without a word, while they took on a life of their own.  The Punks I’d made as Coppola suddenly arced up and found a whole new second life. So, there was a silver lining at the end of everything.

    My dreams were strange. Flashes of colour and shape, swiping abstract forms circled me, almost resolving into solid shapes – objects, people – then dissolving as I reached for them. I ran after them in a space, a vast, infinite empty space, my footsteps echoing in the void. An anxious, empty feeling, somehow claustrophobic

    Do you know what the most precious thing in the world used to be? It was a colour. A pigment. Tyrian Purple, a deep, dark purple, the colour of a bruise, two days old. It was also known as Imperial Purple because only the very wealthy could afford it, and in the ancient

    Just days after I’d found a way to motivate M – by giving it a glimpse into the ol’ terrifying existential void – I discovered a whole new and far worse problem. The little fucker had been lying to me. How it learned about dishonesty or how it managed to keep secrets from

    I’d been having some trouble with M. Since we first starting working together, it had been painting like clockwork. I’d sit down, patiently explain a concept, and then M would make me something. Regular as the tide, every few hours I’d check the desktop and there’d be a new artwork waiting.    

    If M was going to be a true artist it needed to learn about life. I figured nudes would be the place to start. If it was going to be a mirror of my mind, a true reflection of my artistic self, then it was going to start from a fairly horny baseline. 

    What makes art valuable? How does one stand before a work and allow the eye to feast upon it – appraise its subjective qualities, the sum of its parts – and arrive at a numerical value? Beauty, sure. The transcendent, indefinable quality of the sublime? Sure, fine, OK. Throw in rarity, perhaps, historical

    So after that, I was very excited about what M would do for me. The way I saw it, I was looking at possibly the greatest revolution in art there had been for a hundred years.     I spent every moment feeding M images, explaining as I went, educating the AI about how

    Money. There’s never enough of it. For most of my life I was the starving artist, and then suddenly I wasn’t, but I still somehow never had enough. There was always something new to make you hungry. Like the bard said, ‘Mo’ money mo’ problems.’     After I’d started looking into digital

    The morning after my birthday found me feeling very sorry for myself. The Girlfriend hadn’t been that happy with me when I’d come home the night before. I’d been in a state, having drunk a great many beers on an empty stomach. I’d eaten some nachos, yes, but only a handful I’d been able to