Is AI Art Really Art? Technical Progress in Computer Vision Led to More Self-Described AI Artists in the Past Few Years

Technology has affected how arts in the modern world, which is very different from what it was 100 years ago. Through artificial intelligence (AI), self-described AI artists have dramatically increased over the years. Their works have even been sold by large auction houses for dear prices, with some even finding their way to prestigious curated collections.

AI art was initially spearheaded by some technologically knowledgeable artists who used computer programming to create art, but the masses recently adopted it as using generation technology is easier and more effective even without prior coding skills.

Is AI Art Really Art? Technical Progress in Computer Vision Led to More Self-Described AI Artists in the Past Few Years

(Photo : Unsplash/DeepMind)
Artificial General Intelligence: "AI under the hood - AI represented here by geometric matrices has a go at generating cellular data. It represents a future whereby AI could in theory replicate or generate new organic structures used in areas of research such as medicine and biology." Artist: Domhnall Malone

AI Taking Over the Art Industry

In October 2018, the art piece, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, which started the AI Art gold rush, was sold for $432,500. This algorithm-generated print depicts a "formless blur of colors" that was abstract but slightly resembled a human face. It was not even properly placed in the canvass as it is skewed towards the northwest.

Art has always fascinated people and is enjoyed in all forms, viewed for aesthetic and therapeutic purposes. The art business has grown over the centuries and given birth to famous artists, such as Leonardo DaVinci.

Today, technology has impacted how art is created and enjoyed. Art was truly redefined from cameras to software like Photoshop for new ways of creating and enjoying them. According to Forbes, the success of the AI-generated Portrait of Edmond de Belamy seems to have sparked AI art creations all wanting to cash out on AI among some high-spending art lovers.

But ARTSop CEO Arushi Kapoor said that if AI continues to sell for huge amounts, it might de-incentivize actual human creation and creativity. The increased usage of all types of AI in art suggests that it is here to stay and it is no longer difficult to imagine a future where fewer artists are making art because of the lack of platforms to sell.

Arushi, a cultural center and art warehouse in LA founded by Kapoor, and other art companies and galleries are finding a balance between AI art and actual human creation where both can co-exist in the future. This shift is not widely accepted currently as there would still be many people who prefer man-made creations.

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Is AI Art Really Art?

Computer vision is a research area dedicated to designing algorithms that process meaningful visual information, ARS Technica reported. AI art somewhat rides on the coattails of the subclass of computer vision algorithms called generative models that can be trained to encode salient features and produce new images that are not in the original dataset.

Although images produced by them may lack the coherence of detail, they have an undeniable surrealist charm that captured the attention of artists. Tech company OpenAI just unveiled a new model named DALL·E 2, which could generate images from any text prompt and even produce them in specific styles that could mimic famous artists.

Despite the increasing AI art around, it begs the question of whether AI art is really an art and to what extent it is original. These questions echo the worries once raised when photography was invented, allowing one to create a piece of artwork with a mere press of a button and without painting skills.

Today, anyone could create art with just a virtual button to ruin generative models and produce images. That means even though cameras and algorithms do not do art, people do so; that makes AI art an art because humans use AI only as a tool to generate them.

While both cameras and AI have lowered the barrier to entry for artistic creation, it does not diminish the skill, talent, and nationality involved in making artworks.