But there should be an even deeper concern: These tools represent the complete corporate capture of the imagination, that most private and unpredictable part of the human mind.

Algorithmic artist Roman Verostko, a member of this early group, drew a contrast between the process that an artist develops to create an algorithm and the process through which the art maker uses an already developed set of instructions to generate an output. He explained that it is “the inclusion of one’s own algorithms that make the difference.”