Questions Raised by AI-Generated Art

The deployment and use of Artificial Intelligence is raising a lot of questions and concerns, in a wide number of industries and more broadly its role in our lives.

Specific to art and photography, some of the questions that I wonder about include:

What is the role of the artist; who is the author?

Is the author the one who creates the physical artifact? Or the one who has the idea? If the former, then it can be argued that the tool is the author, although given the artist is supplying the terms the human is not without a role. However, if the work is developed with an idea or message in mind, or if the work is part of a larger body of original work, then the role of the human as author becomes more convincing. When a work built using these AI tools is produced should we list the tool in our credits? Do we cite the use of Photoshop? The camera we used? Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It depends on the required level of transparency, or opaqueness. In a recent ruling the US Copyright Office accepted the copyright for the text of a book, but not the images as they were AI-generated and thus lacked human involvement.

What is the legitimacy of appropriation on a mass scale?

Appropriation, in its various forms, has been around for a long time, and works produced by Duchamp and Warhol have been accepted as art, representing examples legitimizing appropriation when an original work results. However, appropriation on the scale of consuming thousands or millions of images — whose origins are uncertain — remains a legitimate question for debate.

What is the role of the physical creation and craft of making art?

Using AI tools certainly changes the process of making art. By making it easier — to democratize — to create aesthetically pleasing works it might put more emphasis on ideas those works convey, but it could also lead us towards a building-block approach, where the parts might be AI-generated, but the work as a whole is novel and original. This approach parallels the production of a book, where individual photographs are organized into a larger work. It offers an incremental / iterative approach where multiple outcomes of individual parts are developed and refined to home in on the desired outcome. It enables an approach of creating prototypes that are refined and eventually used as input into the final product.

What is the balance of aesthetics and idea?

It is arguable that to be art a work must convey a message; it must articulate an idea or be rationalized against art history. While this view might be promoted by academics and art critics, the broader public is often quite happy with a work that just looks nice. If the process of democratization is more than simply enabling more people into the theatre of art creation but also signals a displacement of the elitist “autocrats” that govern art and giving power to the masses then the correct balance is left to the viewer, it is left to market demand and the creator may choose which to supply.

Is subjectivity in art important?

Subjectivity in art has been criticized for lacking authenticity; an artist’s interpretation of a subject might hide what is actually there. In its most extreme forms, a work might be characterized as propaganda. Yet, if an artist does not express a part of themselves in a work, what have they contributed? The distinction might be whether the subjectivity reflects cultural biases rather than a broader socially relevant message. However, these concerns may be limited to the academic audience and less of a concern to the general public.

Are these tools good or bad for art?

These tools will cause displacement, shifts in economic models, as well as open new opportunities. These tools are neither good nor bad. They are just inevitable.