🎨 Can AI-Generated Art Be Considered ‘Real’ Art?

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Can AI-Generated Art Be Considered ‘Real’ Art?

AI can now paint portraits, compose music, and even win art contests - all without ever feeling a single emotion. Tools like Midjourney and DALL·E blur the line between human creativity and machine computation, forcing us to rethink what “art” really means.

To some, it’s the next leap in artistic evolution, as proof that creativity is bigger than human hands. To others, it’s a hollow imitation, missing the emotion, struggle, and intent that make art human.

So, can AI-generated art truly be considered real art or is it just convincing mimicry?

In 1917, French artist and provocateur Marcel Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal to an art exhibition and called it Fountain. It changed art forever. His claim was radical: if the artist declares something art, then it is art.¹

Following that logic, philosopher Alice Helliwell argues that if we accept Duchamp’s approach, it’s inconsistent to dismiss AI-generated works. Duchamp’s piece was controversial and not crafted by the artist’s hand, yet, it reshaped our idea of creativity.²

Art historian Alexandra Cardon compares AI to past breakthroughs like photography, which once horrified traditionalists but eventually redefined visual art. She notes that AI expands access for non-traditional creators and enables immersive, emotion-evoking installations.³

Long before today’s generative tools, we had computer-created works like George Nees’ 1964 piece 23-Ecke⁴, widely recognized as digital art. If Nees’ algorithmic craft qualifies as art, then a Midjourney masterpiece — guided by human intent and vision — deserves the same status.

Illustrator Rob Biddulph says, “Art is about translating what you feel internally into something external.⁵” For him, the essence of art lies in the creative process, not just the output — and “pressing a button to generate an image isn’t a creative act.”

Neuroscientist Erik Hoel takes it further, calling AI-generated art “pareidolia — an illusion of art,⁶” warning that if we fall for it, we’ll “lose art as an act of communication” and forget the role of consciousness in creating beauty.

Musician Yosvany Terry reminds us that forms like music “transmit and represent emotion,”⁷ something AI simply can’t do. A century earlier, Tolstoy defined art as “infecting others with the emotion the artist has experienced.”

As computer scientist Nisheeth Vishnoi puts it, art is emotional communication — something “no algorithm can capture.”⁸ And computing ethics researcher Ebrahimi Afrouzi concludes that AI-generated images belong to a new category entirely. AI art is its own thing — but it’s not human art.

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