The more things change, the more they stay the same

Define art? I once saw a piece of fruit in a cage that was supposedly art. All seems like bullshit to me.

It's not art if it's not handmade by a human

/s
It's art because it's intentional.

The point is to make you think it's bullshit. That was the artist's intent.

AI has no intent. The person prompting it might... But usually it's not intent so much as "I tried until this was pretty"

Which is still art - just not noteworthy.
- One could argue that the viewer also has a role in acknowledging something as art, which would mean that intention is not totally mandatory in the definition.
  
  What would the argument be, exactly? I don't think I've ever heard someone refer to a sunset as a work of art, but only that it was like a piece of art. The only exception have been people who believe in God.
  
  What about a still frame of a sunset, chosen from among the dozens of photos a stationary camera took over the course of a day?
  
  What about an ai generated still of a sunset, chosen from among the dozens produced from a handful of prompts?
  
  ...what if that ai frame gets retouched? Where is the line?
  
  A viewer has no role in determining if it's art. Art is solely determined by an artist intending to make art.
  
  A viewer decides if they like it, decides if they appreciate it and decides what messages they take from it... But they don't decide if it's art. Art is what an artist makes.
  
  by your logic I declare everything I create with stable diffusion to be art :)
  
  Correct!
  
  I find a 5 year old's doodles more interesting and higher quality than anything you're making with SD but it's still art.
  
  Everything you create? When I win the jackpot on a slot machine I didn't create the money
  
  By that logic, no art is ever art because no one "created" anything except maybe god, or something?
  
  If I used a tool to make the pixels light up in a new way, how is that different from Pollock flicking a brush to get the drops the way he wanted? His method is just as stochastic and randomly generated as mine.
  
  I think a viewer can decide something is art unintentionally by evaluating it as art. If you need an artist to intend, then I guess the viewer is that artist because they are the one who made it art.
  
  People can decide non-artistic things are aesthetically pleasing and apply the label of art to them but without a creator you can't have art.
  
  But if it's a good a human designed - that designer had artistic intentions.
- So it is art then due to the prompt engineering.
  
  So if the artist's intent was to create something that is art but not seen as noteworthy to people of your opinion it's art right? As that was their intention.
  
  Yes. That's why I said it was art. That was the closing statement.
- But usually it's not intent so much as "I tried until this was pretty"
  
  I mean, to a large extent, that's every sketch artist I've ever met, but...
Been thinking about it quite a bit

I've come to the conclusion that to me, art is a play on your senses.

A painting plays with your sight

Music plays with your hearing

Food plays with your taste

Dance plays with your sense of balance

Poems plays with your mind
Art is the conscious use of imagination to create something with the intention of it to be appreciated, experienced, and/or evoke an emotion in the observer. It requires one or two way communication between the creator and the person experiencing it.

AI generated images aren't art because there is no conscious creator who intends to create an experience for the viewer. If a future AI is conscious and self aware enough to have a will of its own, and will use it's own creativity to create something to be experienced or appreciated by the viewer, we would have AI art, but until then these aren't art.

Also, the banana taped to a wall or a fruit in a cage is art, though it doesn't mean it's good or not. Art that sucks is still art.
- Is the prompt used not that then?
  
  Seems the process of creating the correct prompt fits your definition.
  
  So the ai is more like the sculpting tools or paint right?
  
  I can go to an online artist and commission a piece of art, but it doesn't make me the creator, and similarly, if I prompt an AI to generate the image, it doesn't make me the creator of the image.
  
  So do you not consider photographers as artists? They don't create the image itself either.
  
  I do consider photographers as artist, because there is an intentional creative process and the creation of the image; there's a great deal of skill and artfulness to photography. When a photographer sees something they want to photograph, they decide the position, the blur, the composition, the focus... All of that is intentionally done to direct the attention of the viewer to the subject(s) the artists wants, perhaps in a specific order. It requires an artistic process to create art.
  
  What I don't consider as art is when a security camera catches footage, this isn't art, it's an image that was created without a creative intent behind its creator, just like AI generated images have no artistic intent behind them.
  
  Prompting an AI to generate an image doesn't make someone an artist just like if I were to hire an artist to draw something for me doesn't make me an artist. Of course, if I hired an artist to draw something, the result is still art as it was created with an artistic process and intent, whereas AI lacks that therefore there is no art.
  
  In the future, should a fully sentient and conscious AI exist, I would be able to acknowledge them as artists if they follow the same artistic intent when creating an image.
  
  Digital art is a thing. Just because something takes text input and not a mouse doesn't change the fact you are using a tool to create art.
  
  You misunderstood me, of course digital art is art when created by an artist, but if I pay an artist to make something I want, it doesn't make me the creator.
  
  If I prompt an AI, it doesn't make me the creator either.
  
  We'll have to agree to disagree because I think prompt crafting is a skill itself.
- I have a thought experiment for you and anyone else who might read this. If I spent months teachings dogs or monkeys to recognize art and replicate it to the best of their abilities, would what they created be art?

I bet you a urinal that you’re wrong.

That's funny. The fountain is a perfect example of why AI" art is not art
- Why do you interpret Fountain as being an example of why AI generated art is not art?
  
  I interpret it like this -
  
  Spoiler tag, so my thoughts don’t influence yours
  
  Fountain was a reaction against artistic snobbery, and it kicked off a movement of people who create art, not for review boards, nationalistic purposes, or rich patrons, but because they themselves find it appealing - the whole ‘art is in the eye of the beholder’ thing.
  
  But I still regard it as art. Someone had an idea, and used tools (“AI”) to execute that idea. Sure, those tools remove certain kinds of skill from the equation (but they do require others, such as prompt engineering), and image generations definitely copy from others - but so do artists.
  If someone makes something that pleases them, who am I to say it’s not art?
  
  Because AI art, as it is commonly used nowadays lacks intentionality (the thing that makes a urinal art).
  
  If I read a book, I used to know that every word was put there by the author with intent. If iI read AI generated text, it doesn't convey anything that a human has put out there for me to experience. I'm looking at formatted output of stochastic models.
  
  That’s a good point.
  
  I’m thinking of art in the visual sense, and of the creator being a person who is prompting the image generator - which I think meets the intentionality standard.
  But, there are a lot of ways folks can use AI tools that aren’t intentional, and I haven’t been considering that.
  
  My stance isn’t 100% changed, but I will start considering intentionality.
  
  Related, but maybe not.
  
  Some years ago, I was a slightly older student with a deep well of photography experience entering a newer graphic design program, and some of it seemed amaturish to the point of being a joke to me. My “Digital Art” class was like that, where the average assignment was to cut and paste things together and apply x number of Photoshop filters to them. It was an easy A, so whatever. I remember for one of those assignments, I just took it as an opportunity to digitize some prints I’d made. I had taken some black and white shots at night of a local train station, which is pretty scenic, and considered a landmark. They were moody, and foreboding, also slightly soft because I don’t have great darkroom technique. I pumped up the brightness, threw on like a papercut/rough edges filter, and layered the whole thing with a not transparent blue gradient that made for this sort of cyanotype³ effect. Later that year, we were told to submit something to a student art show, and I printed that assignment out on the student printer. I might have been first, because the printer hadn’t run in awhile, and the blue print head was sort of clogged, so the thing came out this shade of green instead, because the cyan didn’t print heavily. (But it didn’t band, either, so…) I submitted that because I didn’t want to pay to reprint it, and that was that.
  
  At the art show, someone asked me about it, and I told them that I had initially done it this way for a project. I liked the blue for some reason I now forget, but then it printed incorrectly, and I liked that too, so I didn’t reprint it. I may have even said something cute about not being able to intentionally reproduce that print failure (they cleaned the machine right after my ‘failed’ print), so it’s sort of bespoke.
  
  A peer later asked why I didn’t just say that was intentional, and make up an excuse. And I sort of lost respect for him. Because that wasn’t my intent.
  
  Which is to say I guess I respect even unintentional screw ups, so long as their presentation isn’t wrapped in falsehoods.
  
  A book that is AI generated that was minimally edited and not really written by the person on the byline, then passed off as human work is not art, it’s just fraud. An AI generated book created with prompts from someone who knows how to write, then edited well to eliminate the AI weirdness, and then indicates the writing was largely done by LLM’s - well, I guess I think that’s art.
  AI art passed off as traditional art, or AI art that’s not intentional and passed off as intentional is a fraud.
  
  I guess that’s how your very good point fits in my conceptual framework. If it’s not offered in good faith as art, and explained as art, then it’s fraud. But AI art offered in good faith is art.
  
  Edit:
  I’m sorry some folks are downvoting you. You’ve been respectful and open minded our whole interaction.
  
  But how would you know an AI generated the text? Some current technology isn't 100% perfect, but they're trained to recreate human linguistic patterns based on actual human inputs. If we had a model that was only trained on the "great works" of history I wonder how difficult it would be to determine if an AI wrote it or a human.
  
  Why would you want that, except for maybe putting authors out of a job while still making money from regurgitated drivel?
  
  I don't want to read AI generated text, because that doesn't put me into a state where an author communicates with me.
  
  I never said I wanted it, I was more curious about how you would know that there was intent or not if you couldn't tell an AI made it.
  
  If you enjoyed what you read you might believe there was intent when there really was none and I don't know if that really matters. Your interpretation of the media could still be important to you if it had any impact on you.

I've seen stable diffusion images better than most art.

🤮
- Damn, getting out-done by a thinking rock really hits you hard huh?
  
  People placing no value on human experiences and emotions makes me disgusted, if that's what you mean

They're absolutely art. The fact that we're arguing over it at all is proof enough of it. It's a new medium.

Absolutely agree. No human made, not art.

I'm open to the idea that should a sentient AI be made in the future, with complex emotions and desires, then that AI could create art. As it is right now, it is completely artless.