The aesthetic value of AI-generated art

Experts struggle to distinguish AI-generated art from human creations, and the underlying technology will only become more sophisticated (Lawson-Tancred, 2023). This issue spans across most art forms, including painting, literature, music, and film (Wilkinson, 2020). At the same time, we have intuitions that human art is aesthetically superior to its machine-made counterpart. Since we are

unable to explain this intuition in terms of the work's formal features, we have to look beyond the artwork, namely at its creator and the cognitive capacities that went into creating it. In particular, we must ask: Do only human artists possess the cognitive capacities that we value in the aesthetic

assessment of artworks, or do artificial systems possess them as well? By addressing this question, we will come closer to determining the aesthetic status of AI-generated art - something that only few researchers have attempted so far, and with little success. Embarking on this project will give rise to

new and mutually beneficial debates in the philosophies of art, cognitive science, and AI, while also contributing to society at large and informing our relationship to increasingly elaborate technologies in the creative industries.