Is AI-Generated Art Original? (Authenticity & Originality)

What’s the line between inspiration and flat-out appropriation? In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we grapple with questions about artistic originality and authenticity that have plagued the art world for hundreds of years. In today’s world of AI-generated art, it’s only getting more complicated. You will see a few AI-generated images in this video as part of our effort to dive directly into the questions surrounding AI-generated art.

Crash Course Art History #18
Introduction: AI Art 00:00
Dürer's Copycat 01:10
Provenance & Authentication 02:46
Originality & Copyright 03:58
Conceptual Art 05:51
The "Hope" Poster 08:29
Review & Credits 09:58

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[KannikCat]

I think a "shirt of eyes" is the perfect shirt and metaphor for a conversation about generative AI, which has been looking and ingesting in all directions all at once. As someone in the creative industry, and knowing others who create art for a living, it's a fraught thing for me. On the one hand, what gen AI is, well, generating can be fascinating and fun to play with. But on the other hand, art is often devalued already. With gen AI there's a great potential to further commercialize/economic-alize the arts, reducing our everyday exposure to art and creating a feedback loop towards banality while also hurting many of those those in the creative industries who, unless they are a star, are just eking out a living and/or are overworked. Whether gen AI can be guided to create art is one thing (I think it can), but whether it begins replacing art and artists (plus compensating the artists the AI eyes were trained on) is the more salient issue right now. Thanks for the thought provoking video!

[Furitenma]

I love this, no fear mongering or outright acceptance of AI as an artistic tool, simply showing what we've seen before that resembles this debate. I'd love to see more videos like this that prefer to pose questions instead of answering them based on vague assumptions.

[SamCridlin]

AI art being Art isn't the issue for me. The issue is the AI creator using copyright protected works for educational use to create the original software, witch is fair use. But they then make commercial use of that software it is not fair use, and a license is required. Thus the Ansel Adams Foundation, NY Times, and AP all taking chat GTP to court. Leverage for a license fee. You always have to sue for copyright infringement because no one ever pays when you reach out to them.

[robintauber]

I recall a photo that a primate was the focus... The primate got a hold of the camera and effectively took a selfie. The photographer (who owned the camera) got into a legal battle over whether or not it was the photographer's work at all, since the primate took the picture. I recall that it was determined that since the photo was not taken by a human, it didn't belong to the photographer but I don't recall the rest of the ruling.

[LogicianJackal]

I was surprised that Andy Warhol didn't make it into the discussion of re-contextualizing art

[MicahMann]

Please never stop doing this series. It’s really terrific. Brava to all involved. 💙

[trevoremery]

Well this is a turn up for me, trained in Art College in traditional techniques, post grad with Pop artists tutors, and teaching computer graphics and programming. The phrase " nothing is new" comes to mind then I think of the prehistoric Cave paintings, Picasso, and the other art movements which are human inventions. AI cannot exist in a vacuum it is reliant on human input.

[alien]

I think that anything AI generated that was trained off of publicly available art should automatically go into the public domain.

[tessacarstairs]

I hope the artists who get their work "incorporated" receive fair compensation; otherwise it's just glorified stealing.

[EQuivalentTube]

The thing is, originality is basically an illusion.

I mean it in the philosophical sense: it's certainly a thing one can experience, it's certainly a part of human reality, but it only lives and dies by human perception and interpretation. Kinda like "the arrow of time", or "free will".

In reality, though, no idea is "new" and "unique" in its purest sense. Everything is some sort of derivative, because nothing can just pop into existence out of nowhere, that's not how the Universe works. Everything Is A Remix. If you find some work or idea or invention "truly original" - that means you simply don't know enough about it. And it's fine! That's part of the magic, sit back, enjoy the show.

Which is why I find it a little bit ridiculous to treat ideas as private property. Which is what copyright basically is - it's a speculative construct based on illusion. The fact that it is becoming ever less enforceable, as technology marches on, is just that illusion crumbling around us.

[Dayglodaydreams]

You should do one on romanticism, La Boheme, and decadentism.

[JoaoPessoa]

I think the closest things we have today to the artist's studio system are haute couture ateliers and architecture firms. The name on the dress or building is the designer but an entire team of specialists put the object together.

[andredelacerdasantos]

If the person following LeWitt's instructions didn't follow them properly, would it still be considered a LeWitt artwork? If it's not the case, wouldn't there be a case for it not being a LeWitt artwork regardless of how well one follows the instructions, since one could argue here and there that the style or size of the wall, or number or appearance of lines didn't actually resemble LeWitt's method etc? If he was alive, maybe he could settle the dispute, but what of the ones created after his death? If an AI creates an artwork that didn't follow my prompt precisely, wouldn't it be subject to the same questioning regarding ownership? In my personal experience, AI frequently leaves out sections of my prompts when creating art, making something I was not expecting.

[Albusowner]

Thank you for this video. I was expecting it to be a lot more negative, like what is expressed in many comments here. I appreciated the wider perspective, and I was unsettled but appreciated seeing how similar this discussion was to the case study from a few decades ago, but I would have liked a comparison of how that case study is also different to AI art today because in the first one there is a consenting human forming the artwork for another person, which still seems notably different to a non-human program, even if it's using human references (which, from what I can tell, was mostly if not all without human consent)

[IsThatMyCamera]

No mention of Warhol and Lynn Goldsmith? That case pretty much decided the AP/Shepard Fairey fair use question.

[yebkamin]

I have yet to encounter a piece of ai art that has moved me.

How can there be art without a soul?

[CiaoRooster]

One wrinkle that you did not entertain—
And I’m not advocating for one side or the other. I replayed one of your sentences three times because I kept coming to the opposite conclusion—
All of those Rubens apprentices, they were “trained on” their master. As long as they were marking the work in training, had they abdicated ownership? Did they bargain this for the technique or the distinct knowledge? Were they thus allowed to paint in he stylistic legacy of Rubens, or were they able to own, at the least, their own brush strokes to make a feather or a hat or a person?
It’s a pretty apt analogy. But Silicon Valley didn’t care at the time, so these questions were never litigated. …

[MNSweet]

I've been waiting for this topic to be tackled. To the writers, researchers, and host: well done! You did an amazing job at presenting thought-provoking unbiased factual accounts as to how this topic is not new just a new lens of which we are viewing an old topic. Undoubtedly I know I won't have to scroll far before seeing an emotionally charge post for or against AI Generative Art but I'm very happy with your portrayal of the topic in the video. Also nice set location.

[LANBobYonson]

Sounds like if AI uses it as a reference they should have to share ownership like the HOPE poster. That means if AI art is sold there should be a split pay out to every single copyrighted artwork the AI referenced, maybe by % of how much it was copied. That would be awesome for artists. Surely the AI can calculate the % of what work was copied. Generative AI *does not* do anything but *copy*. When AI is creating completely original art that’ll be cool.

[AlisonLeighLilly]

Missed opportunity to call attention to the parallels between AI art and the early attitudes towards photography as an art form. Many artists and critics alike rejected the idea that photography could be considered art for similar reasons to those people now cite to reject AI art: because photographs were “machine-made, ” “instantaneous” and “derivative, ” only able to mindlessly copy what already existed and to do it at a click of a button without any skill. Of course, we recognize now that photography is certainly an art form, even though derivative and uninspired photographs continue to exist in droves. More importantly, grappling with these claims about photography fundamentally changed our understanding of what art is, and I suspect the same will be true of AI art, too. Eventually. (Although lazy, derivative AI art will also probably continue to exist.)