On AI Art…

“I strongly feel it is an insult to life itself — Hayao Miyazaki

What is art? Is it paint on a canvas, words on a page, notes on a music sheet? Or is it something that comes from the soul, that is full of life and tries to translate the human experience to the best of its ability?

Many, including myself consider AI art to be a bastardisation of the term. My opinion is that art must come from the soul— something a robot doesn’t have. Art is beautiful, partially because of aesthetics and composition but mainly because it captures a fleeting moment in a person’s life, their happiest or saddest moments like the smell of a blown-out candle on a birthday cake or the ache in your eyes after hours of crying. AI may be able to replicate the precision and mathematical perfection of art, but it cannot capture emotion. If we strip art of its humanity, what is left?

Many claim AI helps make art accessible to those with mental and physical disabilities or those that do not have the means to take art lessons and I find that to be a lazy argument.

Many of the world’s most renowned artists were poor people with physical and/or mental disabilities such as Henri Matisse, Van Gogh, Sarah Biffin and Heide Pfützner to name a few. All of these artists had disabilities that some use as justification to partake in the creation AI “art” yet they persisted and used whatever was at their disposal because they were aware that anything that comes from the soul can be art. Brainwaves can be art, something as simple as a heartbeat can be used to create the most beautiful artwork, being alive suffices.

Those in support of AI art claim the art generated from their software is their own because they were the ones that came up with the idea, they just didn’t have the skills or tools to make the drawing. Legally speaking, this is untrue and one of the many reasons as to why AI art cannot be copyrighted and yet, I counter must with the question: if I commission an artist to draw me an alligator on a skateboard, should my name be signed on the canvas or theirs? Afterall, I’m the one who came up with the idea, I was the one that picked the medium used to bring my idea to life, I just didn’t have the skills or tools to do it myself. Obviously, the answer is no.

This also brings up the issue of AI “art” being inexplicably unethical. At least, when I commission an artist, they are being compensated in some way. With AI, the software is trained on the stolen art of thousands of unconsenting artists which is in violation of copyright laws and facilitates forgeries.

AI’s accessibility makes the duplication of licensed artwork much easier. One example is given by the Millennials in Motion Magazine where a French game developer known as 5you fed illustrator Kim Jung Gi’s artwork to a generative AI tool in order to “pay homage” to his work. However, not only did 5you not credit Gi, he also asked fans to credit himself and not Gi when sharing the stolen work.

January 2024 also saw a list of over 16 000 artists whose art had been used to train Midjourney’s AI art generator. The software had been fed this art without consent and had used the art of famous artists like Van Gogh, unknown artists and children alike, all without their consent which brings me to my point: AI art is plagiarism.

This is not a matter of traditionalists being unable to “get with the times” as was the case with photography or digital art. As The Smoke Signal perfectly put it in their article Impact of AI on Art, “while the introduction of  art AI seems like a fancy new toy to experiment with and provides new ways to create  art, it poses a threat towards the authenticity and career of real artists”. AI routinely steals the work of artists and spits out a grotesque imitation of human innovation.

Many also like to bring up the fact that AI can help with aphantasia, the inability to visualise things in one’s mind, however, once again, I find that to be a lazy argument. I, myself, struggle with aphantasia and instead of resorting to AI, I make a pinterest board. I find a random image of someone posing, turn the hairstyle and clothes I want into stickers on my phone, stick them on using IbisPaint X, a free app available on most devices, and draw. It really is that simple, there is no excuse.

I believe that in general, if you can afford to have a computer that allows you to use generative AI, you can afford a pen and paper to make your own art. It is not classist to expect people not to plagiarize, because at the end of the day, that is what AI “art” is— plagiarism.

© 2025 C. H. Gökdemir. All rights reserved.