Should AI Art Be Considered Art?

If you’ve been on youtube as of late, you may have heard names such as ‘DallE’ or ‘Dreamstudio.’ These new applications have taken the internet by storm for their incredible showcase of user prompted AI generated art. One of the most noticeable progressions in recent years has been that of artificial intelligence. While AI may be the nightmare fuel for a lot of skeptics and science fiction writers, as of recently, its abilities have been applied to something no could have fathomed.

Artificial intelligence has gathered mainstream attention from the media for its recent showcase of original art. Most proponents for AI suggested that it would only assist humans with concepts like advanced mathematics and science, but instead, we are now seeing a far more creative side. Granted, there’s actually nothing creative about AI art. In fact, the bulk of credit should go to the human artists who helped the programs mine data. Any art on the internet could technically be torn apart to create ‘AI art.” It’s the user based prompts that make the art unique to the programs.

So what’s controversial about AI art? The answer is simple. What’s controversial about AI art is whether or not it should be considered art altogether. Now obviously the answer to that question is far more polarizing, but from a philosophical standpoint, it’s quite intriguing. Should we consider something art if there is no creative intention behind any of it? The only thing creative about AI art is what the user who prompts it does with it. From that perspective then, it would be considered art. Pretty much all digital art is considered art, AI generated art is just digital art with the workload lightened severely. Still, many will argue that even user prompted digital art isn’t art. It’s an ever worrying debate in the art world with competitions now prey to AI generated submissions.

So where do I stand on all of this? I look at all matters as open mindedly as possible. As someone who creates a lot of digital art, I have often heard from older people that what I do isn’t ‘real art.’ It’s a crushing thing, especially when you take into account digital art requires as much creativity as any other form. So if we as users are prompting AI to assist our creative processes, that is technically the AI’s interpretation of our vision. Our ‘art.’

I think, in simplest terms, if you look at something and it provokes any kind of thought in you, that is art. What artificial intelligence has done as of late is just that. Instead of passing off the hard work of developers around the world and their user prompted AI programs, I think we really should embrace it.