Can you tell which art was generated by AI and which was made by a human?
Can computers create art? This is a question we discussed in class at a Socrates Cafe that really made me think, even hours after the class had ended. I can see both sides of the argument in terms of the fact that artificial intelligence has been producing some amazing pictures that people did not exactly program it to create; the technology developed something uniquely “creative”. However, many other people would argue that it lacks the passion and emotion that went into making it and there’s very little connection between the art and the artist. We debated this concept for a long time in class.
One conclusion we arrived at was the fact that there’s a difference between what makes “art” and what makes “great art,” since just about anything can be defined as art. However, I feel that the differentiation lies in the eyes of the beholder. Personally, I feel that it is unfortunate that artists can spend their whole lives pouring passion into their pieces and are getting lost behind some of AI’s creations. However, I don’t feel that it is fair to completely disregard these creations and call them terrible art. Because I think there’s still a unique part to every piece of art generated from AI and they do still look beautiful.
I find AI seems to almost have its own distinct style and I think we should start regarding it as its own category of art. Like how it’s difficult to say if a song is better than a dance or a painting, I think we shouldn’t be directly comparing AI pictures with work from artists. Since poetry, singing, dancing, and paintings are all their own categories of art, I think artificial intelligence should have its own category as well. Maybe this will help settle some of the unrest over the question of whether AI can create art.