AI-Generated Art, Should We Prefer It?

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I read a recent article that begins, “Pick up an August 2025 issue of Vogue and you’ll come across an advertisement for the brand Guess featuring a stunning model. Yet tucked away in small print is a startling admission: She isn’t real. She was generated entirely by AI.”

It was written by Professor Tamilla Triantoro, who is an Associate Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems, Quinnipiac University. She studies human-AI collaboration, specifically how AI influences decision-making, trust, and human agency. So what is the significance of our being unable to distinguish human from machine-generated art?

Triantoro begins by drawing an analogy to the Turing Test, which is theoretically passed if we can’t distinguish between machine and human conversation.s wondered whether a machine could exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. Today, it seems that “the original Turing Test for conversation has arguably been passed.” Moreover, Triantoro argues that AI has likely passed an “aesthetic Turing Test.” People now struggle to distinguish AI can generate music and images from human creations.

In music, platforms like Suno and Udio can produce original songs, complete with vocals and lyrics, in any imaginable genre in seconds. Some are so good they’ve gone viral. Meanwhile, photo-realistic images are equally deceptive. In 2023, millions believed that the fabricated photo of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket was real, a stunning example of AI’s power to create convincing fiction.

We are being fooled for a number of reasons. First, AI search gigantic libraries of human-made art. Second, AI art now generates human faces that we can no longer distinguish from real ones.  Finally, “AI does not just copy reality; it creates a perfected version of it. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this a simulacrum – a copy with no original.” For example, the AI model in Vogue is not a picture of or a copy of a real woman.

But Triantoro argues that something is lost with AI-generated art.

the “aura” of an original artwork – the sense of history and human touch that makes it special. A painting has an aura because you can see the brushstrokes; an old photograph has an aura because it captured a real moment in time.

AI-generated art has no such aura. It is infinitely reproducible, has no history, and lacks a human story. This is why, even when it is technically perfect, it can feel hollow.

So the question is, what do we really want from art? Triantoro concludes with some questions.

If a machine creates a song that brings a person to tears, does it matter that the machine felt nothing? Where does the meaning of art truly reside – in the mind of the creator or in the heart of the observer?

We have built a mirror that reflects our own creativity back at us, and now we must decide: Do we prefer perfection without humanity, or imperfection with meaning? Do we choose the flawless, disposable reflection, or the messy, fun house mirror of the human mind?

My Brief Reflections

(I’ll begin with a caveat; I know almost nothing about the philosophy of art or aesthetics.)

There is clearly something special about a one-time historical production of some work of art or music as opposed to multiple AI-generated paintings or songs that are just as good or better. But should we really prefer humans to produce a great painting or write a great song over the millions of better songs or paintings produced by AI? I don’t know.

Perhaps the meaning of art does lie in the observer. Maybe we prefer, or should prefer, perfection without humanity. And why does perfection imply meaninglessness? What is so meaningful about imperfection?

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I would like to thank Sylvia Jane Wojcik for sending me the original article.