[gnomewrecker]

I think defining art wholly and solely by the intentions (and humanity) of the artist is clear cut at least, but not very illuminating, because for the person experiencing the art these properties are in general unknowable.

100 years hence you find a beautiful image. Is it art? Who knows — we don’t know whether the artist intended it to be, nor whether they were even human.

[anileated]

“I like this” != “this is art”. The fact that an image you may have found looks good to you without context is orthogonal to whether it is art.

(If you are certain that at least a human has produced such an image, you could speculate about and attempt to empathize with that unknown human’s internal state of mind—lifting the image to the level of art—but as of recently you’d have to rule out that an unthinking black box has produced it.)

You may be inspired by it to create art—but since art is fundamentally a way of communication, when there is no self to communicate there’s no art.

[pixl97]

The problem with your definition is art is worthless.....

Art in a sense is no different from money. If it can be counterfeited in such a manner that a double blind observer has no means of telling an original bill (human made art) from a counterfeit (AI art) then you're entire system of value is broken. Suddenly your value system is now authenticating that a person made the art instead of a machine (and the fallout when you find that some of your favorite future artworks were machine created).

The problem comes back down to inaccurate langage on our part. We use art as a word for the creator and the interpreter/viewer. This it turns out is a failure we could not have understood the ramifications at the time.

[anileated]

This is not offered as some sort of authentication mechanism, the distinguishing quality of art as opposed to a pretty thing is art fundamentally being a way of self-expression, which is inevitably communication. There’s no self-expression when there’s no self to express. If there’s no human on either side, there’s no communication and it’s not art. One may find an object pretty and hang it on the wall, but that doesn’t make that object “art”.

The “complicated” case you hint at is not complicated: if people are misled into thinking some object has been produced by a human while it’s raw output of a neural network without human intervention then it’s not art, no matter how many people assume it’s art. If a machine produced a piece of art that is a frankenstein monster of art pieces, then we are not looking at art.

(And of course if a machine produced a piece of art identical to a piece of art produced by a human before then we’re effectively looking at a piece of art produced by that human.)

> Art in a sense is no different from money.

Per above, couldn’t be further from the truth as far as I’m concerned, but you do you.