Jake Elwes’ Terms & Conditions Opera: a Legalese Libretto (2024–2025) turns the fine print of corporate AI platforms into an absurdist operatic score. Elwes constructed a process whereby OpenAI (famous for ChatGPT) and Suno (a music creation AI) could be fed their own usage policies and terms of service. In this self-referential loop the systems absurdly reinterpret the legal frameworks that govern them, producing a kaleidoscopic blend of musical genres. For Elwes, the true content of corporate AI lies not in its generated output – often imitative and derivative – but in the policies, copyrights, and terms that shape its use and demand real human labour and political engagement. By “feeding an AI on itself” the work renders opaque legal jargon strangely legible and even laughable, highlighting the ethical, legal, and creative tensions at the heart of our relationship with machine-generated culture. Terms & Conditions Opera connects directly to the November 2024 manifesto and collective action Elwes played a central role in, under the title ‘Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction’, in which artists withdrew their labour from OpenAI’s then unreleased video generation model, Sora.

Jake Elwes (b. 1993) is a conceptual artist, hacker, radical faerie and researcher living in London. They have been making critically engaged art exploring the aesthetics and ethics of machine learning systems since the very first generative AI models in 2016. Across projects that encompass moving-image installation, sound and performance, Elwes’ work finds unusual ways of demystifying, mapping and subverting technology. Their work searches for poetry and narrative in the successes and failures of digital systems. Works include deepfake drag in The Zizi Project, glitching oppressive algorithms in Machine Learning Porn and reframing AI generated marsh birds back into nature in CUSP. Their work also calls for us to challenge who builds these systems and for what purpose, and whether artists can reclaim these technologies to build their own digital utopias. Elwes’ work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; UK; Pinakothekder Moderne, Munich, Germany; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Fundacion Telefonica Museum, Madrid, Spain; Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany; and Nature Morte, Delhi, India.