This question has been rolling around in my mind for awhile, and there are a few parts to this question. I will need to step through of how I got to these questions.
I have used AI as a tool in my own art pieces before. For example, I have taken a painting I had made more than a decade ago, and used a locally hosted AI to enhance it. The content of the final image is still my original concept, just enhanced with additional details and also make it into a 32:9 ultrawide wallpaper for my monitor.
From that enhanced image, I sent it through my local AI again (different workflow) to generate a depth map, and a normal map. I also separated the foreground, midground, and background.
Then I took all of that and loaded it into Wallpaper Engine (if you don’t know what that is, it’s an application that can be used to create animated wallpapers). I compiled each of the images proceeded to manually animate, track, and script it to bring the entire thing to life. The end product is something I really enjoy and I even published it on the wallpaper engine steam workshop for others to enjoy as well.
However, with all the AI slop that is being generated endlessly and the stigma that AI has in the art community as a whole, it brought the following questions to mind:
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Is the piece that I painted and then used AI to rework, and then manually reworked further, still my art?
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One step further, I didn’t build any of the tools to make the original painting, I didn’t create the programming or scripting languages. I didn’t fabricate the PCBs or chipsets that I built my computer with to run all of those tools. The list can go on and on for how many things I use that were not created/generated by me nor would it be possible/feasible to give credit to every single person involved. So, is any artwork that I make actually mine? Or does it belong to the innumerable shoulders of giants of which we all stand upon?
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Those questions led me to the main question of this post. Say that a real human grew up with only the experience of seeing AI slop and, as such, can only reference that AI slop experience they had learned; if that human creates something with their own hands, is that piece they create still art? Is it even a piece that they can claim they made?
I’m curious to see what thoughts people have on this.
In your case, AI was used as an intermediate step in a larger workflow. You maintained the creative final OK for the output. You aren’t selling the output, and (I assume) you are disclosing your use of AI, or are at least not trying to hide it. IMO this is just about the best case scenario for AI use.
When there is no input but prompts, no QC, being sold as human art to people who don’t know any better (or worse, those who don’t care), that’s where artistic merit dies.
Anybody can bash on some keys. Piano, PC…
I do openly disclose my use of AI and I have no intention on selling them.
While anyone can bash on some keys, it is becoming more difficult to even prove something wasn’t created by AI.
So, that spurs another question; If someone made it a goal to generate something fake and fool everyone that they create, while the artwork was generated and is not their own, the intention was to fool everyone to make a statement… would the deception be a form of art?
Not in my eyes. Fraud is fraud. Gives off prankster “social experiment” vibes and I don’t consider prank videos art either.