
Is Art Created by AI Really Art? - jrwan
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-art-created-by-ai-really-art/
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hbosch
My personal feeling is that art must at least attempt two things
simultaneously: express an intent by the artist, and present an intent to the
audience. The success and congruency of these intents is largely superficial,
but in my opinion the intent must be present on both sides. The simple way of
describing intent is by feel... a work of art e.g. should display the feeling
of the artist and be able to be felt by the audience — this is what makes art
a human quality. It is intended to be decoded in human ways.

I believe that AI, and any life form, can perhaps create beautiful works that
affect audiences emotionally... but to me art is a fundamentally human to
human transaction (before any conversation on technical merit or intelligence
can even be waged).

Edit: even more simply, a computer can write “I love you” but what does that
statement mean if the computer cannot feel love?

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js8
In other words, you deny AI the capability to create art, regardless of what
it can objectively create. Because you can always say, "the machine had no
intent". But this runs into a problem - if you don't know that the piece was
created by a machine, you might assume intent and judge it as an art. Does it
stop being an art when you learn that there was no intent? What if you learn
that about a human piece of art?

> a computer can write “I love you” but what does that statement mean if the
> computer cannot feel love?

Actually, it's not different from humans. What gives "I love you" meaning is
the actions, for example, caring about the other persons well-being. If a
computer cares about someone, for example, by protecting it, that alone gives
"I love you" the meaning, regardless of what computer can really feel or if
the phrase "I love you" was just programmed into it.

~~~
sh33mp
>But this runs into a problem - if you don't know that the piece was created
by a machine, you might assume intent and judge it as an art. Does it stop
being an art when you learn that there was no intent? What if you learn that
about a human piece of art?

I don't see this as that big of a problem? Something can be beautiful without
being art, but art tends to elicit a different kind of discussion specifically
because there is intent behind it.

As a thought experiment, consider a particularly beautiful natural formation
(like corals or intricately eroded rock). It can be beautiful without it being
art. If someone then told me that it was actually sculpted by a person, then
to me it's now art. I can ponder what the person was trying to express when
they created it. If someone else then told me the previous person lied and
it's really just a natural formation, then it's back to being not art.

If we were able to detect "intent" in an algorithm (although that is a hairy
discussion in and of itself - arguably we could consider objective functions
intents, but in that case I defer to the individual's interpretation as to
whether that's intent or just clean study of a mathematical process), then
yes, it would become art.

~~~
js8
You're right that we exclude "works of nature" from art, despite having
objective artistic qualities (being beautiful, eliciting emotions, etc.). In
that sense, art must be created by humans.

The question then becomes - is the thing created by AI still considered to be
created by human, or by nature? And based on this, we can then classify it as
art or not.

~~~
AstralStorm
Mostly because nature presents little intent. This is also why fractals are
not considered art.

If an AI is able to present intent clearly and consistently (uhh,
intentionally) then it might be able to produce art.

So far, I haven't seen any purely AI work that meets this criteria. They can
have style but lack the "story" quality of the art built on shared language,
culture. Essentially grammar and semantics of given art form. Problem is
similar to though harder than making AI really understand language.

These system generally end at style which is like an ensemble average of
syntax.

~~~
js8
I don't think we necessarily require intent to consider something as art.

If a pianist playfully improvises, mindlessly, without intent, does that mean
she is not creating art? Sure, you can say that her intent is to maximize her
own pleasure.. but then, how it is different from evolution?

It reminds me, is intent the same thing as objective?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI)

~~~
AstralStorm
The pianist still improvises within the grammar and syntax of the art form,
say jazz or pop. (Our devises an entirely new vocabulary and grammar of their
own.) This is different from just style add these kinds of improvisation have
a set of rules and are very different from form free play.

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hx2a
Is art created by an elephant really art?

[https://www.elephantartgallery.com/](https://www.elephantartgallery.com/)

Or a monkey, or some other animal?

Sure, you can call it art if you want to, and someone would be happy to sell
it to you. But is it really art?

Is there a reason why the answer to the question of an AI creating art is
different from the answer to the question of an elephant creating art?

I can't think of one. And the question of animals creating art seems to have
an answer. Although people will pay for it, I haven't seen the art world take
it seriously. I live in NYC and go to art galleries all the time. Everything
is created by humans. Many artists leverage technology in interesting ways to
create something, but there is always a human being behind it.

I do think there is a path forward here though: If the art world considers the
program itself as a piece of art, then that could be the artwork. I mean, if
[Lawrence Weiner][1] can be considered an artist, then why can't Leon Gatys
and his colleagues be artists? Contemporary Art is often [conceptual][2], so
the concept communicated is more important than the physical form.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Weiner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Weiner)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art)

~~~
ianai
Sometimes art is an umbrella for things that don’t obviously fit anywhere
else.

I think art remains in the eye of the beholder. An AI can definitely create
things I and others will consider art.

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lalaithion
There are two options. Either the AI is intelligent and creative in the same
sense as a human being, or the AI is an automaton doing nothing but following
the instructions given to it by its creator(s).

In the first case, the art is Art; the AI is an artist.

In the second case, the art is also Art; the creator of the AI is the artist.

~~~
yetanotheruser
Well put.

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noartbutart
Art is only ever in the mind, so anything can be art if that is how you
experience it.

Better question: can an AI experience art?

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dgut
A Caravaggio has inherent value because it's a cultural artifact. But today's
"art" has little (if nothing) to do with Renaissance art. Modern art is such a
subjective field it's meaningless to discuss what is and what is not.

If you asked a wealthy man living in 1500 whether he would mind his portrait
being painted by a machine, most likely he wouldn't mind that because art was
then a trade and "art for art's sake" wasn't really a thing at the time.

Humans like to put things into neat categories, so, for example, painting and
music are often categorized as art, although they are inherently different
things. It's a lot easier to answer the question "is music created by AI
really music" than "is (modern) art created...".

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jdale27
_A Caravaggio has inherent value because it 's a cultural artifact._

I would argue that it has _no_ inherent value because it's a cultural
artifact. It's just paint on a canvas. It only has value because the culture
thinks it does.

Thought experiment 1: suppose you took a Caravaggio -- say, The Musicians
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musicians_(Caravaggio)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musicians_\(Caravaggio\))),
hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- and shipped it to a hunter-
gatherer culture in Papua New Guinea. Would they value it to the same degree
as the people of New York or Rome?

Thought experiment 2: suppose the same painting (back in the Met) were
suddenly discovered to be a forgery. Would it still have the same value?

 _Modern art is such a subjective field it 's meaningless to discuss what is
and what is not._

Again, I disagree; almost the _entire_ meaning of modern art is discussing
what is and what is not art. Art has followed the path of many human endeavors
-- it has expanded over time to fill all the cracks and crevices of the space
of what could possibly be art, like a species evolving and adapting to fill
every ecological niche. Think of a massive Venn diagram, where each circle
represents an individual's view of what is "art". That Caravaggio would
probably fall squarely in the intersection of the what the vast majority of
(Western) humans would consider art. Picasso? Still very much "art" for most
people. Pollock, Rothko? Hmm... How about Sol Lewitt's wall drawings? Anyway,
you get the point. What's interesting about modern art (to me) is precisely
that it shifts the discourse from "ooh, this person paints really nice
pictures" to the much more fundamental question of "what the heck is art?"
Modern art is experimental philosophy.

 _It 's a lot easier to answer the question "is music created by AI really
music"_

How about an AI designed to replicate the work of John Cage? ;)

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mc32
Of course it is and will be. It's like asking whether some unconscious
scribble/chicken scratch by a live crab dipped in paint and allowed to walk on
a canvas, for example would or would not be art.

Is a hamburger cooked and put together by a robot not a Hamburger sandwich?

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ditonal
Yep I tend to agree. The fact that someone programmed an AI to make that art
is part of what make it art. The artist is the programmer essentially. But
it's also ludicrous to me to think that AI art would somehow replace other art
or music rather than just living along side it.

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jjcm
I feel like any time technology has advanced, we've had discussions like this.
Back when Tron was originally released, it was excluded from an academy award
nomination for visual effects because they felt that using computers was
cheating.

While every iteration of tech makes it easier to accomplish an end result,
that doesn't necessarily mean the end result will be better. What defines an
artist is what they're able to create with the tools they have. Art created by
an AI is really just art created by someone who wrote that AI. Who tuned it,
taught it, and fed it information that steered the end result into something
amazing. It doesn't make it any less of a work of art in my eyes.

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stephencanon
Yes. Next question.

Edit to expand slightly for down-voters: I mean this very literally; "is it
art?" is not a terribly interesting question, because it really doesn't admit
very much satisfying discussion. You either think it is or you think it isn't,
and it dissolves into metaphysics pretty quickly. I find it much more
interesting to just accept that it is and examine the questions that then fall
out from that, many of which are brought up in sibling comments here.

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visarga
Depends on who's looking. Art is in the eye of the beholder.

~~~
taneq
Precisely. There's no such thing as art, except in the minds of people looking
at it.

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AstralStorm
If people cannot understand it, it ceases to be art and begins to be a doodle.

~~~
visarga
It only needs to be art in the head of who's looking, not everyone else.

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orthoganol
I think "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" basically
applies here. Short answer is: no; it's devoid of any aura.

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stephencanon
I love Benjamin's writing, but looking back after the better part of a
century, I don't think that his theses hold up well; he would reject as Not
Art much of the latter 20th century's output, which is an appealing position
for a curmudgeon, but not a very practical one.

I've come to believe that the only useful notions of Art are either the
Supreme Court definition ("I know it when I see it") or the wildly all-
encompassing ones; "anything arranged or interpreted according to aesthetic
principle," is more or less my working definition. Any other definition either
ends up rejecting vast swathes of things that clearly are art or setting you
up for reductio ad absurdum.

So yeah, I think it's art. Now we can move onto more interesting questions,
like "who is the artist?"

Note: anyone interested in this stuff should absolutely read Benjamin!

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innagadadavida
Popular and famous art are all single pieces -- they cannot be exactly
replicated and that's what makes them invaluable. If all you are doing is
taking a printout of a bunch of rendered math equations and coefficients,
then: a.) no incentive for art collectors to collect it and b.) you cannot
copyright it so anyone can make infinite "originals"

~~~
AstralStorm
A true AI would constantly train itself and as such would never produce the
same work again, thus making it unique and collectible. (Even if tasked to
copy it. Unless forcefully reverted to given version.)

This is the same as "is music in digital format art". It can be copied after
all, perfectly if so desired.

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innagadadavida
The AI will just create a file that you can then put on BitTorrent for anyone
to have exact copy. Unless of course you know of an AI can use a paintbrush
and canvas. Please do share if so.

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EGreg
_" Once we've answered those questions, we can tackle the really big one: When
an AI-composed song wins the Grammy, who gets the trophy?"_

Answer: If that happens, then 1 million other songs will win as well. The
Grammy would be as meaningless as trying to judge which AlphaGo game is better
played.

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Ace17
Trick question, considering there's already no consensus about what what "art"
means.

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itronitron
at this point in time, admirers of 'art' generated by 'AI' are like parents
proud of their child's inspired scribbles posted on the refrigerator... a
notable accomplishment for the progeny but an unremarkable contribution to
society

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tsumnia
Take a look at my previous comment about pro wrestling; I think it has some
merit. The idea that we like to have some human connection and see growth in
someone's work gets tainted when you say it was built by a bot

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booleandilemma
There would have to be an element of originality to it.

I could write a winforms program to generate Mondrian paintings, but that
wouldn’t make my program Mondrian.

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EGreg
Is a photograph really art?

(I don't mean in the choice of subject, etc. but just the process and result.)

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coenhyde
I think so but the artist is the AI's creator.

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pmoriarty
_Art is what you can get away with._

Andy Warhol

~~~
js8
In that sense, all AI is art. :-)

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taneq
No, because as soon as you can get away with it, it's no longer AI. :P

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singularity2001
it is called artificial intelligence so yes these are artful artefacts

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oceanghost
I would say if AI can produce original, deeply meaningful art, that's as good
as a turing test. Most humans cannot do this.

~~~
thinkpad20
Well that’s the key word isn’t it, “meaningful”? I think what makes art
interesting is the story behind it, the statement the artist is trying to
make. Art made by a machine is simply following an algorithm. I can find the
process itself interesting from an academic point of view, but I’d find it
difficult to call it “meaningful.” AI has no idea what kind of art it’s
generating, no way to discern what is beautiful or not, no understanding of
its effect on the viewer, no story to tell, no emotional backdrop. This
doesn’t mean the end product can’t be beautiful, but meaningful? Eh.

~~~
AstralStorm
Actually the GAN systems do have a way to check if art is beautiful. This is
why they can produce novel results via experiments. So yeah, such system have
a sliver of an idea of what they're creating.

The problem is not in discrimination at all, but in generation of novel and
correct output. (grammatically and syntactically) Discerning correct syntax
and grammar has eluded all AI so far. (Even specialized translation systems
are worse than babies at it.)

~~~
thinkpad20
I was speaking more about the concept of art from a philosophical point of
view. I don’t see how a machine can “check” if a work of art is beautiful, a
necessarily subjective and human process. Certainly given detailed enough
criteria an algorithm might be able to predict whether a viewer might be
likely to think a work of art is beautiful, but the criteria themselves are
implicitly or explicitly derived from humans — computers have no inherent
sense of beauty.

The whole idea of using the terms “correct” and “check” with things like art
seems flawed out of the gate.

