I tried to argue here why “AI art” in its current form, is not art at all.
Nice article! :)
I like to think of the following example:
There is a magical room. This room is full with an infinite number of images - every possible image that can exist - every combination of pixels - is in this room. A person while in this room has an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of patience. You enter that room with the intention of finding an image that conveys a particular emotion or feeling. You walk through, looking image by image, trying to find one which you believe conveys that emotion. Finally, you find the perfect image. You take it out of the room so that now you can share it with others.
Did you make art?
Not everyone would answer that question the same way. For someone, the act of a meaningful selection is artistic in itself - in a way similar to pointing the camera somewhere and clicking a button as long as there is an intention to do so. But someone else might say “no, you simply picked up an image that already existed, so it is not art”. There is no objective set of parameters to define art, so there are lots of different subjective opinions.
Also related. My family makes jewelry. I have helped them make some AI-inspired designs and posted them on social media. Some people got especially upset and left us nasty comments in which they stated that AI does not make real art, that this was intellectual theft, etc. We never made any artistic claim or called it art - they are jewelry designs that look cool.
AI can be extremely helpful during the first steps of the design process. Usually a client describes their vision, an artist draws it, the client asks for corrections, artist draws version 2, client changes their mind, version 3… AI-aided design can facilitate this process dramatically by quickly iterating through options live to eventually generate a much better initial input for the artist!
I see more people criticizing AI art for not being art than I see people who use AI tools claiming that it is!
Not everyone would answer that question the same way. For someone, the act of a meaningful selection is artistic in itself - in a way similar to pointing the camera somewhere and clicking a button as long as there is an intention to do so. But someone else might say “no, you simply picked up an image that already existed, so it is not art”. There is no objective set of parameters to define art, so there are lots of different subjective opinions.
Meaningful selection is the key here.
As I understand it, art is neither about being beautiful, nor unique. We seldom produce anything that is truly unique. Art is about the artist’s interpretation of his own work. There’s an image out there, and I photographed it. The art lies not in the technic, but in why I photographed it in that particular way.
The way people backlashed was not cool I must say. However, the world of design and the world of art share technics, but are very different in their intentions. Design is always about fulfilling a purpose, to communicate something efficiently. Art is secondary there.