Pondering the legitimacy of AI art

Josh Welton's artificial intelligence-created art using AI-aided program Midjourney.

“The more AI art is generated, the more valuable human-created art.” - Alex Roy

Listen, I don’t want to argue. Art created by artificial intelligence, if it’s even really art at all, is sketchy and problematic. Oftentimes it's using an actual artist’s style, their “language,” as prompts to create derivatives of that person's work. Copyright infringement, the ethics of a computer program pinching an existing style, or the idea of a nonliving, nonorganic entity trying to replicate what has thus far in history been a very human, less than tangible, element of life in creating art are now conversations we no longer can put off.

My brother Seth, an incredible artist in his own right, turned me on to playing around with an AI art-creating program called Midjourney. This isn’t the time or place to discuss how-tos or more technical aspects of Midjourney. There are plenty of instructional videos out there for you to peruse. I am interested in the conversation about what the program is actually creating. Is it art? If not, what is it?

Basic definitions of what art “is” seemingly hinge on it being a human experience:

• “The conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.” - Merriam-Webster
• “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” - Oxford English
• “Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.” – Wikipedia, synthesizing the two above definitions.

Immanuel Kant has a definition of art, and of fine art – the latter, which he calls the art of genius, is “a kind of representation that is purposive in itself and, though without an end, nevertheless promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication.”

He “focuses as much on the creative activity of the artistic genius (who, according to Kant, possesses an “innate mental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art”) as on the artworks produced by that activity.”

It seems a common conception, possibly even a natural law, that art is inextricable from the artist. Art really is a language written to communicate on a different plane than other forms, like talking or writing.

But our world evolves, right? Paul Kristeller posits that “the modern system of the five major arts [painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music] which underlies all modern aesthetics … is of comparatively recent origin and did not assume definite shape before the 18th century.” We create with the tools we have. Painting is done digitally. Architecture is no longer done on a drafting board, it is “computer-aided.” Sculptures have gone from rock and chisel, to shaping clay to make molds for casting, to fabricating metal, to designing on a computer and 3D printed. Music was once chants and sticks on hides but is now recycled beats and synthesized sounds rearranged mathematically to be pleasing to our ears.

Some would argue photography is on that list of major arts now, too, where the image, the art, is completely captured by an optical mechanism.

Are programs like Midjourney and Dall-e just the next step in the creative process, or are they the death knell for the previously human-centric act of making art?

Josh Welton's artificial intelligence-created art using AI-aided program Midjourney.

I’m not sure, but they are fun to play with. I’ve been experimenting with Midjourney, using different prompts and even photos of my own metal sculptures as “inspiration” for the program. Results are wild and all over the board. It is a process that you can, to an extent, refine as you go, but there’s still a lot of “Jesus take the wheel” and finger crossing that the image is even close to what you hope for.

That being said, in its current form, I think AI can be a fun way to boost inspiration. I look at the way the program riffs on my welded sculptures and there are elements that are super cool ... and what if I use that as a jumping-off point for my next sculpture?

I guess for me it comes down to “man and machine,” not “man or machine.”

What do you think?

Dance Dance Evolution metal sculpture by artist Josh Welton.