AI and Artistic Authorship | Art Is Art
By Bill Hendricks
Recently, Instagram labeled a photograph of one of my drawings as AI-generated. The drawing was mine, created with pen and ink. I had asked ChatGPT to help correct the color in the photograph because the original was too gray and flat.
The first correction wasn’t quite right. I asked for changes to the color and darker areas, reviewed the results, and approved the image. Later, I made my own correction using Affinity Photo and replaced the photograph on Instagram.
The experience got me thinking about AI, artistic authorship, and how we judge creative work.
A tool is a tool.
I’ve spent much of my life watching technology change how creative work gets done. When I studied design, we learned to specify type for professional typesetters. Then came the Macintosh, desktop publishing, Photoshop, and other tools that transformed the printing and design industries.
Some jobs disappeared, new possibilities opened up, and artists and designers adapted.
Now we have AI.
What bothers me isn’t the idea of acknowledging AI involvement. It’s how that involvement is described and why visual art seems to receive so much attention.
If Instagram had labeled my photograph AI-assisted color correction, I wouldn’t have objected. That’s what happened. But AI-generated suggests something quite different. It implies that AI created the drawing itself.
It didn’t.
And that raises a larger question. Why are we so concerned about identifying AI involvement in visual art?
What about poetry, literature, music, and other creative work? AI is being used in all of them. If we’re going to require disclosure, shouldn’t the same standards apply across the arts?
For that matter, artists have never been expected to explain every technique they use. A painting might be identified as oil on canvas, but that tells us very little about how it was made. We don’t normally ask artists to account for every brush, medium, correction, or revision.
Why should AI be different?
Then there’s the question of where AI gets its information and images. People point out that AI systems are trained on enormous collections of existing work, including copyrighted material.
That’s a legitimate concern, particularly when it comes to permission and compensation.
But artists have always looked at other artists for inspiration. I certainly have.
I’ve traveled to Mexico because I’m fascinated by the use of color and symbolism in Mexican art. I’ve studied Paul Klee and his wonderful arrangements of color and geometric shapes. Warhol, Peter Max, Vasarely, and M. C. Escher have all influenced how I think about images.
I look at their work. I learn from it. Sometimes I borrow an idea about color, composition, or structure and take it somewhere else.
That’s part of being an artist.
Of course, there’s a difference between an artist studying another artist’s work and a company training an AI system on millions of images without necessarily obtaining permission. Those questions deserve serious consideration.
But I don’t believe that every image involving AI should automatically be considered a copy or somehow less original.
I also think we’re overlooking something important about the creative process. Someone working with AI may spend considerable time describing what they want, selecting colors, adjusting compositions, reviewing results, and deciding when the work is finished.
Those are aesthetic decisions. They’re part of making art.
Does that mean everything created with AI is good art?
Of course not.
There’s plenty of schlock out there, and there always has been. Some of it is made with paintbrushes, some with cameras, some with computers, and now some with AI.
I’ve seen wonderful work made with the simplest materials and some pretty awful work made with the most sophisticated equipment.
The tool doesn’t guarantee the quality of the result.
And if someone wants to buy something I think is terrible, that’s their choice. They may see something in it that I don’t. That’s part of what makes art interesting.
I’ve spent enough years making art, teaching art, and looking at art to know that we don’t all respond to the same things.
Nor should we.
I’m not suggesting that artists should misrepresent their work. If someone claims a work was entirely handmade when it wasn’t, that’s a different matter.
But I don’t believe artists should have to provide a complete explanation of their creative process simply because they used AI.
And if someone doesn’t like the fact that an artist used AI?
Tough noogies.
They don’t have to like it. They don’t have to buy it. They can move on to something else.
What matters to me is the work itself, the choices behind it, and the experience it offers the viewer.
Technology will continue to change. It always has. Artists will continue to experiment, adapt, and find new ways of expressing themselves.
And audiences will continue to decide what they value.
A tool is a tool. Art is art.
