Art, Authorship, and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Scholars have recently taken interest in the phenomenon of AI art. I engage a variety of questions surrounding this topic, especially those pertaining to the art status of AI-generated work and how we might adjudicate authorship in such cases. I begin by arguing that according to contemporary accounts of art, some AI-generated images can count as artworks. I contend that it makes more sense to conceive of such popular works of AI art as bad art rather than non-art. Next, I argue that some AI-generated artworks do possess unique aesthetic properties. I show that by deploying a technique I call bias-prompting, artists are able to exploit the algorithmic bias of AI systems to generate artworks that possess an aesthetic feature I call misalignment. I then consider whether AI is an artistic medium or artform and argue that AI is the vehicle through which the artistic medium and artform of AI art is expressed. I conclude by suggesting that in the case of AI-generated texts there is a curator in place of an author. Whereas an author creates what I call Traditional Texts, a curator discovers what I call Artificial Texts. I argue that the only theory of authorial intent that can explain how Artificial Texts acquire literary meaning is Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism.