September 10, 2026
Well, yes, it can.
Thank you for your attention, see you next time!
...or see you right now, if you also feel confused when it comes to AI art, what it is, how it relates to old-fashioned human art and whether it is art at all.
My best friend's niece's sister Jenna once asked me this thought-provoking question:
"There are two images. One is a scanned watercolor landscape painted by a human artist, with brushes and hands and - what's it called? - imagination. Another one is an AI-generated landscape. They are identical, pixel-to-pixel. Is one of them more valuable than the other?"*
Let's spend some time unpacking this question, unless you have more important things to do (I do, but I procrastinate).
The first glaring problem is the subjectivity of this question. Valuable to whom? Important to whom? I'm a human, and there's some less-than-50% chance that you're a human as well, so we'll be tackling this from a human point of view. (If you're not human, rm -rf).
Is human art more valuable to humans than AI art, and if it is, then why?
The next tricky question is "What is art?" Obviously, it's a very simple and trivial question, which we shall now answer definitively, once and for all.
Art has myriads of forms, starting with the simplest ones (orchestra symphonies, marble sculptures, architecture, protorealistic painting) and all the way up to most complex and advanced ones (stick-figure comics, dank memes).
We also should not forget that art forms can be combined to create something greater than the sum of its components - consider cinema, which combines writing, composition, acting, directing, make-up, stunts, and so on.
It makes sense, therefore, to analyze art through the lens of what constitutes its most fundamental characteristics, common for art in general and not just some forms of it.
First, let's introduce the concept of an object of art. It's the end result of an artistic process. It can be material (a statue, a painting, a taped banana) or immaterial (a performance of an opera, a piece of code that won IOCCC).
An object of art has to be created. It has to be intentionally brought into existence by a set of one or more creative agents.
This phrasing is more involved than just "it has to be created by someone", and that's on purpose.
It can be a person, or a set of persons (co-authors), or a system of people (see end credits of any movie). It can be something else entirely, perhaps. But it has to harbor intention.
When I told this to my mother's friend's stepson Joseph, he had some objections.
"What about a picture drawn by an elephant with a brush? What about a particularly beautiful pattern of frost on a window?"
We're almost entering a religious territory with this latter one (and I'm almost terrified). Sure, nature can be beautiful. A sunset can be breathtaking. But is it art? I maintain it's not, since there's no artistic intention involved.
Nature just is, and it is mostly aesthetic. Artificial things can be aesthetic too. But is everything that's aesthetically pleasing necessarily art?
I would argue that the answer is "no", and the separating quality here is presence or absence of an intentional creative agent (or a set/system of such agents).
Rule of thumb: a picturesque mountain isn't art; a painting of a picturesque mountain is art.
(Joseph's question of an elephant-made art is more involved, and I'll tackle it in a later essay. Unless I forget or chicken out of it).
But what separates art from, say, simple manufacture? If I, an intentional creative person, make a wooden chair, is it art?
Well, it may be, if it's particularly aesthetic, or made in Baroque style, or has a bas-relief on its seat, or is a smart metaphor for how everything these days is a post-ironic copy of a simulacrum. Or - it may just be a chair.
Who decides? Maybe I, as an artist, decide that my chair is an object of art and not just a practical product. Maybe a person who sees it in an art gallery even agrees with that.
It's, again, a subjective category, which we'll abstract away by introducing a concept of "artistry" - that is, something that makes art art. It can be an idea, or a set of ideas behind a masterpiece, it can be human experience, pain or emotion expressed through art, it can be artistic skill or mastery. Basically, it's that secret ingredient which makes us say "yep, that's art".
Let's sum it up. Every artistic process involves a creative complex which produces an object of art, which is then observed (consumed, listened to, marveled by) a perceptive complex. It's as abstract as it can get.
We'll now focus on the creative complex. It consists of the following:
The last addition here - artistic instrument - is there to separate the artistry, which is an attribute of a creative agent itself, from the instruments the agent uses to actualize this artistry. The instrument is external to the artist as such.
Equipped with this bare-bones analytic system, let us tackle some simple example, and then the original question.
"Mona Lisa", one of the most famous and important objects of art in history. Let's try and perform our crude analysis of it.
This wasn't too difficult, but it illustrates how we analyze art through the lens of the creative complex and its components. It's just a basic system, of course it's not perfect, it will develop into something more nuanced over time - but it's something to start with, and it will help us answer my niece's sister's best friend's question about two identical images. Let's try it out.
The second one is perhaps not what one would expect. If an image is AI-generated, then why a human is listed as a creative agent? That's because the intent to create an object of art originated in a human mind. Intention is a function of consciousness. It's a whole separate question to unpack, but the basic point is - human has intention, AI image generator has none. AI generator is merely an artistic instrument.
The difference between the two images, then, boils down to the following:
But how do we decide which of the images is more valuable? Which one is better?
Of course, it's a fuzzy one. But, through the analysis of extremes, we can perhaps demonstrate that one piece of art can be more valuable than the other. Compare a recording of yourself striking a G chord on a guitar versus Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". Clearly, everyone (maybe except your girlfriend [if you have one {and maybe not even she}]) will agree that the Moonlight Sonata is better. It may not be a universal opinion, but it's pretty obvious and decisive. It just gets less obvious and decisive when the quality difference is not that stark, but quality and value comparison is possible in principle. And this difference lies in the amount and quality of artistry.
Colin's landscape is more valuable than Sam's landscape because Colin's artistry is more involved, broad and rich than Sam's. Even if these two landscapes end up completely identical.
Colin is just more of an artist than Sam.
So, can a robot compose a symphony? With the current state of AI, the answer is yes. A robot can compose a symphony just as surely as a brush can paint a portrait. That robot is an instrument. The actual creator is the one who prompted that robot, and that person's skill (involved in this symphony) is invariably lesser than the skill of whoever writes them by hand, with full understanding of harmony, melody, abilities and limits of particular instruments, and so on and so forth.
A robot can compose a symphony, but its artistic value will be diminished.
Now, there's more to say on this topic. What if the robot in question is AGI? Does it have intention? Can AI-assisted art, in some cases, be more valuable than human art? These, and some more, are questions worth investigating further, so expect a Part 2. Press "Dislike", hit that "Unsubscribe" button and have a nice day.