🧠 AI Art Isn’t the Problem, Your Comfort Zone Is.

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Welcome back AI prodigies!

In today’s Sunday Special:

• 📜The Prelude

• 🪞The Criteria for Beauty

• 🖌️The Machine Behind the Masterpiece

• 👷Should We Update Our Criteria?

• 🔑Key Takeaway

Read Time: 7 minutes

🎓Key Terms

• Generative AI (GenAI): Creates entirely new content that replicates human-like creativity.

• Artistic Evolution: The historical progression of art forms in response to changing culture, society, and technology.

🩺 PULSE CHECK

📜THE PRELUDE

As you wander through the art gallery, your footsteps echo softly across the polished floor, while the white walls amplify the vibrant colors of the artwork.

Suddenly, an ocean canvas seizes your gaze: waves swell with frothy whitecaps beneath a sky ablaze with wild pinks and molten oranges.

You lean forward to examine the delicate brushstrokes that seem to set each wave in motion. For a moment, the world behind you fades. Then, a small caption catches your eye: “Created by Artificial Intelligence.”

Did the feeling survive, or did GenAI flatten it? What do we cherish when we look at artwork? Does GenAI collapse the cost of creating, forcing us to rethink what makes human creativity valuable?

🪞THE CRITERIA FOR BEAUTY

⦿ 1️⃣ Beauty for Beauty’s Sake.

In 1790, German philosopher Immanuel Kant published “Critique of Judgement,” proposing that the experience of beauty relies on Disinterested Pleasure: you find something beautiful not because it’s useful to you, but because it pleases you to experience it. In simple terms, beauty for beauty’s sake.

• 📍Disinterested = You’re not thinking about benefiting from it.

• 📌Pleasure = You enjoy it in a way that’s free from practical concerns.

Kant outlined that the experience of beauty possesses three core features:

1. 🟣 Pleasure Without Desire:

• While viewing the ocean canvas, you remark: “What a gorgeous painting!” You’re taking delight in the art itself, not what it can do for you. For example, you’re not imagining where the painting might hang in your living room. You’re simply absorbed in the experience of admiration.

2. 🟢 Free Play of the Mind:

• As you admire the ocean canvas, your thoughts alternate between understanding and imagination. To understand what the painting depicts, you notice the color contrast, the depth of the horizon, and the formation of waves. You imagine: “What would it feel like to stand on that shore?” There’s no pressure to analyze the artist’s intent behind the painting.

3. 🔵 Universal Validity:

• We often say that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, yet when we encounter a work of art we love, we can’t help but assume everyone feels the same. Unlike personal preferences, like favorite foods or preferred clothing style, our experience with beauty feels universal. As you stand before the ocean canvas, you expect the sweeping waves and vibrant horizon to evoke the same sense of harmony you felt in all who see it.

🖌️THE MACHINE BEHIND THE MASTERPIECE

⦿ 2️⃣ Authorship in the Age of AI?

The moment you notice the caption: “Created by Artificial Intelligence,” you’re reminded that the value you assign to creativity depends not only on what was made but also on who made it. This reaction reveals how deeply intertwined our perception of art is with the notion of authorship.

GenAI complicates Kant’s criteria for beauty by shifting the focus from the artwork itself to the process behind it. We start thinking: “How did AI create this? What algorithms were involved?” Our curiosity becomes analytical rather than imaginative. Instead of fully immersing ourselves in the ocean canvas and the feelings it evokes, we focus on the mechanics of creation.

⦿ 3️⃣ Perception Matters.

When AI becomes the artist in any creative field, our perception plays a crucial role in our response to the artwork. For instance, when listeners know a piece of music is AI-generated, they tend to like it less. This perception is based on pre-held biases, which stem from discomfort with non-human creativity, skepticism about authenticity, or a lack of emotional connection with the musician.

Hearing music without knowing who or what composed it can mitigate these pre-held biases, similar to how blind orchestra auditions allow evaluators to appreciate the music’s quality without subconsciously considering the musician’s age, race, or gender.

USC Annenberg found that people enjoyed AI-generated music more when they viewed the AI as a traditional musician. This discovery highlighted that our perception of AI plays a BIG role in how we evaluate what it generates. In other words, how we view AI can heavily influence how much we like what it creates.

👷SHOULD WE UPDATE OUR CRITERIA?

⦿ 4️⃣ The Artist’s Hand Has Been Eroding.

In the 1830s, photography emerged and allowed images to be captured mechanically rather than drawn by hand or painted by stroke.

In the 1960s, conceptual art took center stage and argued that the value of art lies in the emotional engagement it provokes rather than how it looks.

By the 1990s, digital editing platforms like Adobe Photoshop emerged and allowed software to crop or expand photos, add or remove objects, and modify lighting or manipulate textures.

GenAI continues this trajectory. Although no human directly paints the pixels, creative expression still emerges through carefully crafting prompts and selecting which AI-powered tool to use, such as Midjourney.

Just as photography, conceptual art, and digital editing platforms were initially met with skepticism, over time, each evolutionary form of art became accepted, and even celebrated, for expanding what counts as creative expression. Future generations may not experience the same resistance that many of us feel when we encounter AI-generated artwork. In time, AI-generated artwork may simply be seen as another avenue through which human creativity continues to evolve.

🔑KEY TAKEAWAY

If beauty requires a traceable artist, AI will always feel incomplete. But if beauty lives in the experience, AI isn’t threatening it. It’s expanding the range of what art can look like, how it can be made, and who can make it.

📒FINAL NOTE

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