The recent opening of an AI-generated art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art has triggered a debate about artificial intelligence in the art world. According to the exhibition’s page on the MoMA website, “Unsupervised: Machine Hallucinations” by Refik Anadol, “uses artificial intelligence to interpret and transform more than 200 years of art at MoMA.” Anadol trained an advanced machine-learning model called StyleGANZ to process 138,151 images. He further developed the exhibition through a software called Latent Space Browser that his studio has been working on since 2017.

Some may say that “Unsupervised” is plagiarism, however others may see it with a different lens. Riverdale’s Head of the Art Department and graphic design teacher, Mr. Jason Ruff says, “I think all great artists steal. Think about how many things are sampled throughout our modern lives. Music is sampled, visuals are sampled, and things are recreated. We just put our own twist on it to innovate.” Inspiration is critical to artistic innovation, a perspective which ninth grader Yifei Liu explained, arguing that, “most people have heard of writer's block but there’s also artist’s block. Using AI-generators, not for the actual art, but for the idea is beneficial to creating a lot more new ideas.” AI can be the perfect tool to get creative juices flowing. An artist can experiment by creating whatever prompt they want and then make an original piece based on the generated image.

It is also important to note that as of right now, AI is not capable of creating art on its own. “The programmer writes that algorithm," One of Riverdale’s technology specialists, Mr. Matthijs van Mierlo explains, “to develop and change the parameters ever so slightly to get something that looks visually pleasing.” Despite questions about its authenticity, generated art can be less about the tools used to make it and more about the intentions behind its creation. In other words, even if an AI is making the art, the person programming it still decides what prompt to give the artificial intelligence. Therefore, the human is the one making the initial creative decision.

The Head of the Tech Department at Riverdale, Mr. Jonathan King acknowledges that, “there are people who vehemently believe that this is not art because a human being did not directly create it. [But] as long as you appreciate it, I do not think it really matters where it comes from.” While this evidence appears to favor AI-generated art, the question of whether or not it can be considered authentic still remains.

After all, “Unsupervised,” was not a gallery based on AI-generated pictures but rather an exhibition created by AI using thousands of other artists’ work. It is one thing to base art on an original prompt, but that’s not what Anadol did. He instead had a machine scramble and randomize the elements of other people’s art until it was unrecognizable. Anadol also never credited the artists who made the original pieces. This lack of credit leads to an exhibition where the inspiration has been so thoroughly blended by AI that it is impossible to identify and appreciate the origins of the artwork.

However, while artificial intelligence can give artists inspiration, it is also possible that people can use AI to skip over critical artistic steps. Mr. Ruff admitted that, “I'm still on the fence about who's making what,” Even if the human artist created their own original prompt, AI dictates all the little choices, such as color, shape, and size, making it difficult to determine if it is art at all. Up to this point humans and human creations have defined art.

“Unsupervised” is one of the first AI-generated art exhibitions, but as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, there will likely be similar galleries in the future. Moreover, it may be time to reevaluate our current definition of art. After all, art pushes the boundaries of convention. What pushes boundaries more than art that’s not even man-made? 

AI-generated art is a divisive topic. One person can argue that it is an innovative tool that can be used to further an artist’s creativity. Someone else can say that AI-generated art should not even be considered as such because a human did not make it. Either way, artificial intelligence has already made an impact on the art world. And it will continue to do so, for better or for worse.