When asked to do something, an artificial intelligence system almost always produces a response, even when it has no understanding of what is being requested. This is what happens when DALL·E, an image-generation system, is asked to make a photographic still life. It can only invent an image which, despite its realistic appearance, is neither a still life arranged before a camera nor a photograph. This task asks it to record reality and express a relationship to ordinary objects: demands that make little sense for an algorithm…