Artists around the world have been deeply disturbed by the anthropomorphisation of machines designed to steal and devalue their work. The researchers explored the nature
of art, clarifying that image generators are not artists. It seems obvious, but if you
listen to the AI hype, it clearly needs to be spelled out. As they explain, while art is
grounded in the very activities of living, it is the human recognition of cause and effect
that transforms activities once performed under organic pressures into activities done for
the sake of eliciting some response from the viewer. Art is not only about our experience;
it is about our sensitivity to the experience of our audience. It is fundamentally humans
reaching out to each other. By contrast, image generators have no understanding of the
perspective of the audience or the experience that the output is intended to communicate
to this audience. At best the output of image generators is aesthetic, in that it can be
appreciated or enjoyed, but it is not artistic or art itself.