Walther Benjamin examines this point extensively in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which should be required reading for everyone, but especially anyone who thinks that AI art is the same as human art. The crux is that an authentic work (you can think of it as the “original”) has some… thing , some Je ne sais quoi that he calls the Aura. It’s a feeling you get from the real authentic thing. It’s the reason people line up at the Louvre to see the tiny Mona Lisa behind thick plate glass instead of just looking at a poster. Or why NFTs tried to be a thing and basically failed after the meme of it all died out.
I think the “Je ne sais quoa” is the human element: art is fundamentally about human communication and interaction.
We can (usually) infer the meaning and emotion an artist is trying to convey – particularly if given context. Even if we don’t “get” what the artist is trying to say, we can come up with something an equally valid. Real art only “works” because of empathy.
AI generated “art” fails for that reason: you can’t infer the thought process of a machine that doesn’t think, or emphasize with emotions it doesn’t have. As a tool it can assist with creating art, but the more heavily it’s involved in the creative process the less meaningful the resultant “art” becomes.
Walther Benjamin examines this point extensively in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which should be required reading for everyone, but especially anyone who thinks that AI art is the same as human art. The crux is that an authentic work (you can think of it as the “original”) has some… thing , some Je ne sais quoi that he calls the Aura. It’s a feeling you get from the real authentic thing. It’s the reason people line up at the Louvre to see the tiny Mona Lisa behind thick plate glass instead of just looking at a poster. Or why NFTs tried to be a thing and basically failed after the meme of it all died out.
I think the “Je ne sais quoa” is the human element: art is fundamentally about human communication and interaction.
We can (usually) infer the meaning and emotion an artist is trying to convey – particularly if given context. Even if we don’t “get” what the artist is trying to say, we can come up with something an equally valid. Real art only “works” because of empathy.
AI generated “art” fails for that reason: you can’t infer the thought process of a machine that doesn’t think, or emphasize with emotions it doesn’t have. As a tool it can assist with creating art, but the more heavily it’s involved in the creative process the less meaningful the resultant “art” becomes.