Hart won an Optimus Award for her AI piece “A Starry Soul,” which depicts a human eye in the style of “The Starry Night” by Van Gogh. Her piece, along with the AI artwork of other winners, was displayed on the wall within the exhibit.
She said she is hesitant to take complete ownership for her art, given that the image she created was pieced together from pre-existing artwork.
“I see how it can be hurtful to artists, and that goes back to why I don’t feel like I should be called an artist — because it’s a combination of an algorithm and other people’s artwork,” Hart said. “It’s not mine. I didn’t generate that by hand.”
Hart said she thinks artists who do not want their original work to be used by AI should be protected from machine learning algorithms, but expressed concern for how that would be possible, given the current state of machine learning technology.
“I feel like artists should have the ability to take their art out of the algorithm or the computer database that all of these generators draw from,” Hart said.
Nate Diers, a student artist at UNC, said it was an issue that artists such as himself do not have the ability to exclude their work from AI algorithms already.
Ammerman said that AI artwork made in the style of other artists should be treated the same as human artwork inspired by other work, and that restrictions on the type of art used by these algorithms limits the freedom of AI artists.
While he acknowledged that many people have worries about AI, Ammerman said he feels strongly that they do not see the positives, which is why he created the Optimus Awards — to explore the benefits of using AI. He said that this technology is here to stay, and the sooner students learn to embrace it, the more productive they will be.
Ammerman said that he wanted to encourage conversation about AI-generated art through the exhibit, and that the name of the exhibit — “Is it Art?” — was intentional.
“I wanted to engender a debate about the nature of generative AI and get people talking about their views on whether it’s art,” he said. “I think when you see it, it’s undeniably art.”
@dailytarheel | university@dailytarheel.com
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