Is Generative AI Art?

Art and Humanity

We’ve seen the great artists of our history, from Raphael to Monet to Michelangelo, and we have admired their works for centuries with a desire to delicately preserve them. With every one of their brushstrokes, we can feel their joy, their sorrow, their love, and their pain. And through their masterpieces, their emotions become ours. Art has always been the mirror of the human soul and spirit: it is a form of creative expression, and a way we seek to create meaning in life. Even centuries apart, art has always remained fundamentally human. It is a constant reminder to us that no matter how different we are, we are creative beings at our core. So, what does it mean to be “fundamentally human?” There is truly no one right answer, but I have always believed that to be fundamentally human, we must be completely authentic in the essence of our self. We have emotions. We have thoughts. We have impulses. We have dreams. But, we are essentially a paradox. We are rational, yet emotional. We are fragile, yet resilient. And we are limited, yet aspiring towards the infinite. If art is a mirror of humans, then it reflects how we perceive the world and how we choose to navigate it.

Generative AI

Now, let’s turn our attention to Generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content based on what it has learned. In perspective to art, Generative AI is trained on millions of images that are created by humans, such as paintings, sketches, and illustrations. The model consistently works over these data inputs, and eventually learns the intricacies of artwork. For example, it can learn what a brushstroke looks like, how we draw light, and how we see depth. The AI decodes these patterns in a statistical format from the datasets, and when prompted, it can build a new image from scratch, pixel by pixel.
Some examples of Generative AI that are present today are DALLE (OpenAI), Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly.

Poetics, by Aristotle

Poetics by Aristotle is one of the earliest and most influential works of literary and aesthetic theory in Western philosophy. I recently had the chance to read it, and I found the experience both challenging and rewarding. In all honesty, I often found myself reading and rereading lines to decipher Aristotle’s intent and understand the nuances hidden between the lines. The text demanded close attention.
A note is that while I have made references to paintings and sketch work, Poetics mainly addresses art in the form of poetry and drama. However, it is applicable to all forms of art. So, what did Aristotle want to tell us in Poetics? There are several points to be made, though the overarching reason was to address how and why we create and respond to art. Aristotle explains the importance of imitation, or mimesis. He states that there are “the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation,—the medium, the objects, and the manner” (Part III, Poetics).

• i) Medium: “rhythm, language, or ‘harmony’” (Part I, Poetics). It focuses on the materials used. More examples in reference to paint are acrylic, gouache, watercolor, charcoal, etc. We choose how we want to convey our emotions through the materials we use. For example, watercolor is more loose and free flowing, while acrylic is more steady and bold.
• ii) Objects: what is the work of art about? In poetry and plays, it is most likely “men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type” (Part II, Poetics). We choose who or what we want to express.
• iii) Manner: say that i) and ii) are very similar. We then turn to iii) manner to distinguish. Aristotle says that “he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us.” (Part III, Poetics). We choose how we want to express ourselves through our thoughts and reasonings.

Aristotle also discusses emotional release through art as a form of catharsis. Viewers, whether watching a play or a painting, can experience catharsis when they put themselves in perspective to the art before them.

These main ideas that Aristotle discusses originates only from the human soul that cannot be replicated in any way. The naked human spirit can never be imitated.

Art imitates life, or life imitates art?

In Aristotle’s Poetics, he argues that art is essentially an imitation (or mimesis) of life. However, a counterargument is that life imitates art in the sense that our perception is shaped by what we view in galleries. We mimic that of what we see in art, we perform that of what we see in art. Art creates ideals, and teaches us how we want to live. My opinion, now, is that both Aristotle and the counterargument are correct. Art imitates life as much as life imitates art. They both stem from human emotions, desires, and reasoning. One influences the other in a continuous cycle, similar to that of the chicken and the egg. We cannot find one beginning.

Is Generative AI considered art?

In my opinion, no. Art is too fundamentally and innately human to be recreated by anything non-human. As we refer to Aristotle’s Poetics, every step of creating art is intentional. What kind of medium do we want to use? What language? What type of paint? What kind of film?

What kind of object do we want to create? A man? A lion? A myth?

What kind of manner do we want to portray our work in? Do we want a tragedy? A happy ending? To paint the moon? Or the sun?

While some may argue that we, as humans, created artificial intelligence like generative AI, then what the AI creates is an extension of the human mind. However, I strongly disagree. We can say generative AI can output images, but the images that it outputs cannot be considered as art.