Some of the most common essentials people generally appear to agree on are: art must have some form, style and the meaning behind it. It's still very arguable but hey, we have to start somewhere.
Right now they generate pictures and music pretty well, sure other decent forms are yet to come, 3D modeling is also advanced so soon it may apply to sculpturing too.
Some people care only about the outcome in art. So they would obviously aim for visuals. To me, it's kinda bland, because I value the process behind it. There is this magical aspect one might name the "artistic fulfilment" and it's very vague and probably very different to certain individuals. Although it's not really possible to describe what it is about, I'd simply call it the feeling following the artist when doing, or mainly finishing, their piece of art. It doesn't have to be a positive feeling too. In fact, barely anything is purely positive. Creating is different for different people, some would find it easy and jolly, some would have to put pain and restless nights to create something amazing. The character of a painter and a painting won't necessarily go in pairs. Junji Ito's work is just monochromatic misery, while he is such a swell fella. Hayao Miyazaki is the direct opposite. Bob Ross reflects his joy in paintings, H.P. Lovecraft's library alongside their author are straight up void.
A beginner might have a brilliant idea how to picture their feelings but no way to fully express everything because of lack of expertise in tools usage. That's where the visual effect will not be the greatest, even if the concept was great. I consider most people belong to this group, also finding myself a mediocre artist in terms of painting things on canvas. Obviously doesn't have to be canvas, I can express my ideas way clearer in terms of audiovisual media, cosplay I got into, or simply on paper, as a writer.
It's all only about the tools. And that brings us into the concept of "professional artist". Well, I believe this term is in vast majority of cases very misused. If you get a commission for a drawing, you find yourself in this position not because you're an artist, but because you are fluent in tools usage. Don't get me wrong, one doesn't exclude the other, but usually when you get such request, it is not your thing. You draw a thing or two for your client because you just know how, it doesn't have a soul, doesn't go in pair with artistic fulfilment, you do as you're asked to in order to buy food. And you can absolutely be a total goat in the outcome, but is it reaaaaly art? I've had cosplay props commissions before and I didn't really feel anything while making them, I did it because I knew how. But when one day some random girl on the internet asked me if she could use for her album cover my weird postmodern CGI creation I worked on just because I felt the flow, it gave me more satisfaction than a thousand paid comms. And it wasn't even aesthetically good!
There are no right or wrong feels, just the ones you more or less enjoy. Everyone has a style, beginning from cretins like me, through experienced creators who know what they're doing like klein, to legendary names who perfected the craft like Vincent van Gogh, Witkacy, Beksiński, generally all those gods whose art would be recognised when randomly brought up in public. Does AI have a style too?
Actually, yes. And also no. Ahh, I played you so well there, dementia starts hitting hard already. Okay, okay, AI art is a very general term and every engine differs. Most popular ones I'm sure people interested in the topic have heard about are Midjourney, DALLE and Stable Diffusion. All of them can replicate any said style, because their models are very, very advanced and use enormous databases in their neural networks. Though, you can still see their default vibe when you don't request anything specific in the prompt - especially Midjourney, it has a very characteristic style if you leave it alone. So, is it art? My definite answer would be no because of a very simple reason - it's still just a tool. Incredibly advanced one, progressing immensely, probably in the future will take jobs from professional artists... or craftsmen. It's also not that simple to use and most likely for a brief moment when human jobs are still be necessary, we will watch the birth of a new actual profession, the AI creation trainer.
One final point I wanna mention is the credits. Honestly, many people seem to care about it a lot, but in the modern world in most cases I don't think we can just state a single author of anything. If your art meets digital processing at ANY point, you have an entire army of people responsible for the making of your tool. In smaller degree, same applies to every physical form of art, same applies to even your thought process because we all get influenced by other people or environment around us. You can't credit everyone, the world is too big to do so. Everyone works hard to make it a more beautiful place. If you make something and have a need to sign it, credit yourself and the closest ones who helped you make it. I don't see any reason to shit all over the place. It's not like you ever cared about even a fraction of people working on Hollywood movies, and yet they sit in the credits. Just do your thing and be decent.
All pictures are ai generated by Midjourney.
