Like the SF trope of humanoid androids that lack a "soul", AI art is the appearance of creativity without creativity.
It raises the question of whether the lack of intent matters if something is indistinguishable from a human creation.
I feel it does, but equally a big chunk of the meaning in any work of art is imposed by the reader. How many of us have loved songs or art or books only to learn that what we took away was never intended by the author? We cling to that meaning.
@iainjclark
Given that some human at least chose the prompt (and engine and parameters) and also chose which particular pieces to select / display, it seems like if Duchamp's Fountain or found-object art is art, than so is art made with AI tools; it's not like the software is autonomous!
I do share your concerns about the current generation of software, and whether it violated people's rights in the way it was trained. That's rather a separate question from the whole "is it really art?" gatekeeping...
