Original Intelligence - A Defense Of Human Art

Art: This is a word many people struggle to define. For a long time, my colleagues fell into this pit of struggle as well. We were stuck with the difficulty of not knowing what truly defined art. It is funny because we all consider ourselves accomplished artists. Professional painters, authors, and published musicians. Yet we all scratched our heads at the very simple question, “What is art, really?”

In its simplest definition, Art is, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.”

There are several important factors within this sentence, but hereafter, until this chapter concludes, we will focus on the keywords, “conscious,” and, “skill.” Skill is defined as, also as per the prior dictionary, “the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance.”

If art is most defined as the conscious use of skill, then what skill is being used in generating content via Artificial Intelligence? Would it not make more sense to label the AI as the creator of the image and the prompter as the client?

Take this example: Jeremiah is a well-established artist. Belle is an appreciator of Jeremiah’s work. She mails him a letter requesting a picture of a couple holding hands under a cherry tree. Who is the artist?

That seems like a redundant question, but let’s dive deeper. Replace Jeremiah with an image generation software. Belle asks this image generation software to generate a photo of said couple holding hands under said tree. Somehow, in the eyes of the public, it is Belle that is now considered the “artist.” There is a very fundamental flaw in this logic. No matter how in depth the request, commission, or prompt is, it is still the Jeremiah, or the AI, that is creating the image. Is the one commissioning the AI now considered the artist?

One might fight and say something along the lines of, “She is the artist because the AI is a machine and not a person.” If you claim this statement, there is some truth. The machine is, indeed, not a person. However, the machine still generated the image based on the prompt or commission given by Belle. Belle did not create this image; she merely asked someone or something to create it for her.

Using this logic, the AI is the artist. That is, while more accurate, still an unsatisfying answer. There is one small reason for this. Artificial Intelligence is not conscious. There can be no conscious use of skill and creative imagination if there is no conscious imagination.

Hence, Artificial Intelligence cannot be the artist.

This leaves many people to think that Belle is the artist by default. However, not many people I have interviewed seem to think of a third possibility: there is no artist. When AI is involved in the creation of aesthetic objects, there is no conscious imagination, there is no skill, and there is no artist.

Only a customer.