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I decided to use Shutterstock for my AI image, and was surprised by the results of it. I’ve been quite fascinated with Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, and his life for a while now. One of his paintings that I’m fond of is ‘Starry Night,’ not only because of its beauty, but because of its meaning—more so what others have interpreted it to be. For this reason, I chose my AI image to be Van Gogh painting Starry Night.

The first thing I noticed is that the actual painting in this image is very small because it seems to be far away from the artist. There’s a small field of Sunflowers, a stream, and a few mountains that lead to the ‘starry night’ we see. What surprised me most is how quickly I was able to get this image. I was able to type in almost anything and get a result, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

AI has become an outstanding resource for various things—meaning anyone can use it for anything. They could use this to create a new, never before seen image. From the moment I saw this image, I saw authenticity in it. While it was made by artificial intelligence, this is an image that I have never seen before—nothing similar either. When I put the phrase in, there were many different yet similar images to it. Each having their own twist to it. Authenticity ends there. Yes, it’s different from the others, but there are many similarities to other images. Though I will say, this image looks almost relaxing, like a breath of fresh air. Van Gogh looks calm which contradicts the meaning behind Starry Night, seeing that it represents Gogh’s mental health.

While this image wasn’t initially what I intended it to look like, in the years to come–or months, AI will eventually be able to generate and give you exactly what you’re looking for. AI is becoming more and more advanced. Soon enough we’ll be able to get an image out of any phrase imaginable.

Overall, using AI to create this image was exciting and scary. Exciting because I was able to get an image out of any phrase I put. Yet it was scary because AI is growing everyday. In the time to come, AI will be used to replace people and their work. This is something that needs to be stopped, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I know that I personally won’t do anything to make a difference, and many others will say the same, and it’s frightening.

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AI Platform: DALL-E 2

Prompt: Many retro TV screens stacked in a pyramid shape, with a hypnosis video playing on all of the screens

This is the initial result of DALL-E 2's AI picture search when I typed the aforementioned prompt. This image clearly shows a cropped representation of numerous old television screens, some turned on and others turned off, making a pyramid-like formation. Actively lighted screens display a stunning assortment of bold and vivid colors. It is worth noting that a considerable fraction of the television screens in the pyramid's middle part are dormant, although many of those on the outside are operating.

Toward the top of this pyramid, there are multiple wedge-shaped television displays, each with a different color scheme. This discovery highlights a DALL-E 2 misconception, as the initial prompt stated unambiguously that the TV screens should be "stacked in a pyramid shape," rather than having a pyramid-like geometry altogether. This divergence from the expected conclusion caught me off guard. Furthermore, there is a mismatch between the screen activation status and the prompt, which specifically indicated that a hypnosis movie should be played on "all" displays.

Finally, a careful examination of the video information exhibited on each television screen reveals that none of them are capable of inducing hypnosis. Prior to starting the search, my vision was of all screens generating a black and white mesmerizing spiral while remaining active. Furthermore, I did not expect the image to be cropped; my expectation was to see the TV screens combine to form an unbroken pyramid shape.

The idea for this project came from an Instagram art page I follow, where the featured artist specializes in creating unique 3-D displays. One of their most renowned works is a fractured wine glass covered with many bandages and filled with red liquid. Drawing inspiration from this artist's work, I set out on a journey to create a series of words based on technology. To achieve that vintage look, I eventually focused on retro TV screens. The addition of the element of determining the shape that the TVs must replicate was meant to test the AI platform. Furthermore, I chose a weird and unusual hypnosis film to be played on all screens at the same time.

The resulting image powerfully exposes the flaws inherent in AI, which were previously acknowledged. Despite these flaws, the AI managed to conjure up an image that resembles my original design. Given AI's ability to learn and adapt, I am confident that DALL-E 2 will eventually generate results that are exactly in line with my creative vision.

This image strikes me as lacking in authenticity. The image's distinctiveness and intrinsic value are diminished if another person acquires access to or enters the identical term into the same extended language model. While the image has an inherent validity, there are clear differences between the input phrase and the resultant output. As a result, the image cannot be considered wholly authentic because it fails to effectively transform the query into an image that accurately reflects the original intent. This highlights the fundamental limits of AI image models like DALL-E 2.

When AI-generated images are examined in the context of Walter Benjamin's concept of aura, it is clear that these images lack the aura that is often associated with conventional art forms. While they have virtues and can be important in and of themselves, they raise problems about the nature of authenticity and originality in an age of AI and mechanical reproduction.

When aura is considered in the context of AI-generated images, it becomes clear that these images have a different kind of authenticity than traditional art. Their aura is linked to their nominal authenticity (if they are legitimate AI model outputs) and a subjective assessment of their expressive authenticity (how well they convey desired emotions or concepts). However, because of the mechanical and algorithmic character of AI-generated images, the traditional notion of aura linked with the originality and emotional depth of original artworks may not apply directly to them.

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AI: Craiyon

Prompt: “Male Body Dysmorphia”

After quite some time spent on thinking of the infinite possibilities of what subjects I could generate, I wanted to see the AI’s interpretation of the feeling of body dysmorphia. According to the Mayo Clinic, body dysmorphia is “…a mental health condition in which you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance.” Body dysmorphia has affected many, especially with the use of social media, which takes a toll on our perception of our own bodies. This AI image was generated as a related image to the prompt, “Male Body Dysmorphia”. The particular prompt that generated this image was, “Skinny man crying because he lost his frisbee.” I thought it was interesting how my original prompt (Male Body Dysmorphia) and this prompt were “Similar Images.” The images generated by both prompts were similar in the depiction of the man, but these two topics are completely different. I was incredibly surprised, because I’m not sure anyone would relate body dysmorphia to losing a frisbee. When making my original prompt, I was expecting an image that was somewhat along the lines of a man looking himself in the mirror and seeing a particularly overweight, or skinny image of himself instead of his real body. Body dysmorphia is a struggle that I’ve learned to cope with over the years, but it has taken a toll on my mental health especially during my fitness journey. Social media puts this “false reality” into our heads that every person should be blemish free, have abs, and live a perfect lifestyle. These lifestyles people post are lies. Many people are affected by them as they compare themselves to the perfect people they see. In this image I notice a young man who has a sad expression on his face. He has an almost frail look to him with his small appearance. The background is dark, and the image shows just this man who is alone. This adds to the emotional aspect of the image that I feel relates to body dysmorphia. When affected by body dysmorphia, it is often you and the mirror when it feels the worst, which is somewhat depicted in this image. The face is also blurry, which is similar to all other images generated. This could point to the fact that AI can’t quite generate the complexities of human nature. I believe that AI cannot comprehend certain aspects of the “authentic” human nature. A picture cannot simply depict a feeling completely and AI does not understand this. That’s why the faces in nearly all AI generated images are blurred, because we are all unique in our own way. We are authentic. AI can’t portray each individual's authenticity.

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This picture depicts what could be a futuristic city built in the mountains. The peaks in the background show the backdrop of the city. This showcases the future if the world is more populated, we could resort to building cities in the mountains. The picture showcases a rough sketch of what that would look like. The neon lights are the to represent the flying vehicles of the future and the bustling city lights of the city at night. When phrasing the question I mentioned that the picture should be realistic, but instead Dall-E gave me what seemed to rough sketch rather than a real picture. Furthermore, there seems to be a moon with rings in the background, without me prompting that. Despite these deviations from my prompt, the picture is aesthetically amusing. However, it was still different than what I pictured in my mind, as pictured a more realistic depiction of the city with more tall skyscrapers. When coming up with the idea for the image I wanted to depict what a futuristic city would look like. The first two images that popped into my mind were of a floating city and a city in the mountains, both of which might have realistic possibilities in the future due to climate change and the need to move away from the seas or live in them due to overpopulation. So I used two prompts, one for the floating city and one for the city in the mountains. After making some small edits to see how the pictures would turn out I decided to pick the picture that seemed to be most unique and aesthetically appealing. To arrive at this picture I used the prompt “A futuristic city with many skyscrapers, with neon lights depicted in night, looked form  side, on the side of the mountain, futuristic vehicles in the sky, snow on the mountain, realistic picture, pictured in extreme detail?” I pictured a city with many tall buildings scattered throughout the mountains, however, this picture took a different approach, which shocked me. The AI does not just follow my instructions but instead adds its own flare to the image, making it unique in a way. So it's somewhat new and something that was never pictured before. It's like a new idea, but it's not entirely authentic. I would argue that the art has some expressive authenticity as an individual, we can interpret what this picture means to us, but at the same time, I would argue there isn’t much normative authenticity as there is not much historical context for this picture. However, it might have some normative authenticity in the future. However, this art is new and unique giving it some authenticity, even though it was created by an AI.

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In my framing AI images essay, I decided to analyze a series of photos generated by the AI image generating platform, “Open Art”. I thought it would be interesting to test how accurately this algorithm could represent imagery of UC Berkeley, and from there synthesize an argument regarding AI’s ability to encapsulate what an authentic image is/ what qualifications make an “authentic image” in regards to a discussion surrounding AI.  I started out with about the most simple prompt you could compose for the algorithm to interpret, “University of California Berkeley Campus''. The results were anything but Berkeley. The first image just about verbatim resembled Princeton University’s Nassu hall, the only discrepancy being the building’s facade appeared to be limestone rather than the hall’s classic brick architecture. Submitting the prompt a second time resulted in a nearly identical image. Perhaps this was the platform's feeble attempt at depicting Wheeler Hall? Doe? The one thing these generated buildings have in common are their greco-roman columns. Perhaps a more accurate image will result if a prompt requesting either of these buildings is submitted. “University of California Berkeley Wheeler Hall '', in response to this prompt, “Open Art” ditched the limestone architecture and gave us Nassau Hall in all its red brick glory. What do these inaccurate images indicate to us about AI’s capacity to generate an “authentic image”. First, we must synthesize an argument as to what an authentic image is. Dennis Dutton in his “Authenticity in Art” argument outlines some clear guidelines as to what distinguishes a piece of art as being authentic. There are two forms of authenticity that can be applied in this discussion, “Nominal authenticity” and “expressive authenticity”. Nominal authenticity can be defined as being authentic to the era a piece was created in, correctly identifying an artist, and the piece’s proper identification. Expressive authenticity is not quite as straight forward when defining. Broadly, according the Dutton, this form of authenticity pertains to an artist being true to their expressive styles and creative processes. When dealing with AI generated art, the issue of authenticity as defined by Dutton becomes convoluted, why? We’ve taken away the human aspect of art generation. If asked whether an AI generated image of Berkeley was authentic in the nominal sense, we could argue it is authentic representation of something created by an algorithm, but the argument that it is an authentic representation of Berkeley by means of accurate portrayal or expressively authentic by any stretch would be false. Let’s approach nominal authenticity from the accuracy angle. Nominal authenticity could be applied an artist’s accuracy in their ability to recreate imagery, a location, etc. It is obvious, analyzing the images generated by Open Art that the pictures generated of UC Berkeley are far from an accurate representation as to what Berkeley actually looks like. Thus, in this sense, it would be difficult to back an argument for AI bearing nominal authenticity. What about expressive authenticity? It would be absurd to argue AI’s ability to be expressively authentic. Dutton mentions traditionally, expressive authenticity in performance arts has been noted as ““faithfulness to the performer’s own self”. What if there is no self? There is no human emotion, heart, rationale behind what is generated by AI art platforms. There is an algorithm. An algorithm that takes other artists pieces, and attempts to synthesize them, resting a final product. While AI platforms follow certain patterns in their image generation based on the way in which their algorithms were written, for example, Open art AI associates the word “University” heavily with Ivy League schools such as Harvard, these patterns do not mean the pieces generated are authentic. Removing the human heart and creative process from the artistic process consequently removes with it any expressive authenticity.

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This image displays a figure sitting alone on a swing in a park. The swing is connected to a few trees and there seems to be no people around him. He seems to be very isolated.  The phrase I used to compute the image was, “someone sitting alone on a swing during lunchtime.” Looking more closely at the image, there appears to be some sort of play structure behind the large tree to the right. There is a box surrounding the base of the large tree. However, this could be a computation error from the AI where the tree naturally transformed into a box base at the bottom. The atmosphere of the photo also translates into something that is quite gloomy. There is sun peeking out where there is no tree, but instead the figure decides to stay on the swing which is draped in shade from the large trees. I thought there would be a sense of isolation with this phrase and I wanted to see if the AI could capture such emotion in the picture. Often AI is classified as not being able to compute emotion in what it makes. Therefore, I wanted to test out this theory. This is why I chose a phrase that had a bit of a sad connotation because I wanted to be able to see if it could identify a sense of emotion in the image. The AI could have easily chosen a more upbeat and sunlit atmosphere, which would change the connotation of the image into someone playing happily on a swing. However, the weather and the tree shade emphasizes a feeling of loneliness among the boy. I would have believed that the AI would just compute what I asked for without including a focus on the weather or the color distribution in the image. However, I was proven wrong because I do see emotion and feeling in the art. This shows how maybe AI doesn’t explicitly portray the emotion in the work, but from the computation and gathering art from multiple other sources on the internet, it is able to incorporate some feeling in what it makes. I think this image relates to the concept of nominal and expressive authenticity. The image lacks the nominal authenticity because of how AI computes images based on their data from online images. However, with the phrase being originated by a human, I believe there is something unique about the image that has some expressive authenticity. Nominal authenticity corresponds with a painting or image that is relevant to that specific point in history. Whereas expressive authenticity can be anything that is created by someone or something and has some uniqueness. Through these definitions, I don’t believe that the AI has nominal authenticity, but I do think there are aspects of expressive authenticity as the art is unique in its own way.

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The prompt I chose for this image was “Space Race in the Cold War, pop art”. I used the AI “Open Art” to create the picture. The AI art depicts a rocket and a UFO in space with bright colors as I prompted the AI to use the “Pop Art” style. The picture has a few planets and stars to portray the setting of space and almost has a futuristic feel due to how the rocket and UFO are designed.

Since I mentioned the space race in the Cold War, I expected the AI to create an image with rockets showing the US and USSR to contextualize the image. However, to an external viewer who is unaware of the prompt, the artwork does not make it clear that is it meant to depict the US and USSR’s race to space during the Cold War. I wanted the AI to create artwork that shows a key historical moment in an art style that was famous and widely used during the period of time of the space race. However, since pop art was used as a means to portray more mundane everyday objects and imagery from mass culture, the space race would typically not be depicted using the art form of pop art. I expected there to be more clarity on the time period in the image as opposed to what the AI generated.

I was experimenting with the accuracy of AI’s historical knowledge while creating artwork. I tried phrases with different historical events of the time before selecting this one. In addition to the historical accuracy of the event, I was curious to know about the accuracy of a particular art style so I decided to select pop art as this was one of the most influential art styles during the 1950s. The AI seems to be trained well in terms of art styles as its depiction of pop art is accurate in comparison to a lot of other art created in this style. Furthermore, the bright primary colors are characteristic of pop art. However, in terms of historical accuracy, the AI depicts a more vague view of the space race as there are no details in the artwork about the historical context during the Cold War. I noticed the AI’s lack of accuracy on specific details of the prompts while using other phrases as well.

The image is authentic to a certain extent as it is original based on the prompt I gave. Rather than being a replica of a pre-existing image, it takes inspiration from other artwork in this style. However, the lack of authenticity is exemplified by the image's lack of specific contextual details, such as the specification of the race to space between the US and USSR. It is a generic portrayal of the space race which makes it lack authenticity. The AI does not have expressive authenticity as there were no expressions of an individual’s values, beliefs, or experiences due to the artwork being generated by AI. Hence, although the AI portrays the prompt of the race to space during the Cold War in a fairly accurate art style of pop art, it fails to depict the true nature of the space race.

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Prompt: Painting of red tulips in an adorned vase. The atmosphere is gloomy. Site: Free AI Image Generator

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It took me a while to think of what prompt I wanted to give the AI. I knew I wanted something that felt personal to me just to see if my emotions could be reflected in the generated art piece. My thoughts immediately went to prompting tulips in some sort of sad setting.
The image consists of red tulips placed in a clear vase. Something that stuck out to me is that even though I prompted the AI to give a painting with an adorned vase and regenerated various times, it never gave me such a thing and the vase ended up being clear with the flower stems showing through. The flower vase is placed on a red velvety surface which adds something to the atmosphere that I find hard to describe. To me, it feels like the red surface reflects some kind of passion, romance, or intimacy to the image and pairs nicely with the red of the flowers. The flowers themselves do resemble tulips but the AI generator made them come out wonky as the petals are not well formed. The green parts consist of an entangled mess of leaves and stems which cannot be told apart. The background is black which I believe was the AI's attempt to make the atmosphere gloomy but it greatly failed at doing so. I tried many times to generate a painting that would have a sad setting - specifically through the lighting but even when I prompted it like that, it did not generate what I was looking for. Therefore, the image I settled for failed to convey the specific emotion that I wanted. As a whole though, I think the image is very pleasant to the eyes as the color scheme is neat and sort of resembles Renaissance-era paintings.
I was surprised at how well of a job the AI generator did at making the painting look like an actual painting. A lot of the times I have used an AI generator, I noticed it always focused on making the image look realistic as opposed to looking painted even when it is prompted to make a painting.
I think I had high expectations for the AI generator because I am used to it giving me more content than I prompt it. In this image though, the generator was very lackluster as the image came out looking fair simple. In a way though, I feel like it works because all the attention goes to the flowers themselves and the complementary red surface that they are placed upon.
The reason why I chose red tulips was because they hold sentimental value to me and I was hoping that my emotions could be reflected in the painting. However, I think the AI failed to do this. When I look at the image, I don't feel some sort of connection even though red tulips themselves are something I connect to. I think the AI fails to be authentic because it doesn't carry the experiences that I have. Authenticity in art to me means a piece that carries the emotions of the artist and the things they have health with. The AI only carries a prompt but it will never be able to convey the real feelings of someone.

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Everything happens for a reason, life is for discovering not knowing

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So the image generated is a person with a scenic background. There is a mysterious element about it. It does not have the aura that I would have portrayed if I myself had painted/drew this so as a result it lacks nominal authenticity if it is considered authentic to me as it was my input. I notice this image is of a person infront of a thick wall of greenery with a wood wall in the distance but further into the distance is the ocean. It is surprising that AI was able to create art that could accurately be interpreted as the key words I entered. I know that this was the purpose but I am just shocked that it didnt just show images of the key words and instead made a story. With this in mind it created something unique and original through its own interpretation. Since these images come from a data base I am very curious to see what images inspired this and what about the images and lables for them the AI took. I can’t think of the specific thing I am thinking about but I think there is a quote, image, ect with a similar theme as what I entered about past the challenge is the ocean of opportunity that the AI could have been inspired by. Also there are many themes of perseverance that might incorporate the ocean being the end goal since it is know to be mysterious and hold secrets and treasures so it being generated was a curious outcome. I think the results translate well to what I was thinking as the ocean in the distance shows that everything happens for a reason because you just have to persevere through the greenery that looks like a challenge but in the end you reach an unexpected goal so in the end it is all worth it. The trees are thick and you cannot see all the way through so the person is approaching unexpected terrain but are not showing fear or looking defensive which is what I think is the representation of the part that I entered about life is for discovering not knowing. They are up for the adventure and are not scared of the unknown. I chose the phrases about being okay with things whether they turn out good or bad because it has been a theme I have been exploring in my life right now and it seemed like a great opportunity to see a visual representation which might give me another perspective to think about. I think the image is authentic because it took a collection of things that I do not know to have already been put together. It is not fully new and original authentic since it draws references from sources.

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Prompt: "an NBA player scoring a game winning, buzzer beater basket in the final championship round. The sweat is dripping from his forehead, the defender's hand is right on his face, and he is laser focused on making the shot."

I had a collection of AI images that were generated by Open Art. The first couple images that were initially produced came off from the phrase "Scoring a game winning, buzzer beater basket in the NBA final championship." Too my astonishment, the results left out features that I had originally desire. In the first image that was produced, there was an absence of an opposing team and only one team was present, watching on of their teammates layup the ball. The climactic nature of the buzzer-beating shot had also remained absent from the photo, which is what I had initially thought the AI would have produced. In addition, the image fails to convey the essential elements of a regular stadium basketball court, where there's an assortment of half circles and lines. The second image I had produced managed to partially encapsulate my intentions from the prompt. It could be assumed from that photo that a winning shot might be occurring, as there was a defender close-up to the person shooting the ball. Also the court had seemed to be more realistic than the other. However, I wasn't satisfied with those first two photos that I had produced and attempted to provide a more vivid description that aimed to elicit an image of "an NBA player securing a game-winning buzzer-beater basket during the final championship round. Visible perspiration glistens on his forehead, a defender's hand looms perilously close to his visage, while his unwavering focus is fixated on the impending shot." Unfortunately, the results in some of the photos that were produced from that prompt had also failed to produce desired features. In one of the photos that were produced there were multiple arms coming out from the person that is taking the shot. My goal in all of the \se creations was to conjure an imagery of a game-deciding shot wherein the countdown clock above the basket races to, the ball suspended mid-air, and a crowd in the background gripped by the suspense of the impending outcome. Despite the flaws in each of the images, it is worth noting their commendable attempt to grasp the concept I was thinking of. It could be the case where the greater specificity in the prompts might yield improved results, however I feel that there were definitely certain limitations of the AI generator, which may not possess the advanced perceptual abilities for what I was asking. Nevertheless, it remains a testament to the authenticity of the generated images, as it synthesized representations from a curated set of textual inputs, drawing from information of sets of data.

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Prompt: “College kids enjoying summer vacation in Vietnam”

Going into this assignment, I had high expectations for what AI would produce. While playing around with the AI picture generator, I first asked the AI for the prompt of Vietnam countryside with a beautiful sky, which gave impressive results. I was curious if the AI could produce human faces since previously I’d only asked for nature-related prompts. While I scanned around the room I spotted my building mates playing pool and doing assignments which is where I thought of the college students. Then I thought back to one of my first AI creations which was of the countryside of Vietnam. Putting it together, I thought of my current prompt. Immediately I noticed the distorted faces and abnormal limbs.  I thought it was interesting that AI replicated the nature of Vietnam pretty well in my previous prompt, but human faces are where it failed. It brings me back to our discussion on how AI may be able to write formal and well written pieces, yet humanity is what it lacks. In this piece, the literal human faces are what the photo lacks. It’s also interesting how all the students in the photo look to be of Asian descent. Although I mentioned Vietnam, I was referring to their location and I didn’t mention any specifics on the ethnicity of the college students. Another factor that I noticed was the hats that the students were wearing. I can make out that they are traditional Vietnamese hats worn by farmers typically in the ricefields to keep the sun out of their faces. I am not quite sure why but the fact that AI decided to place the hats on them is interesting to me.

This piece loosely follows expressive authenticity. The AI was able to take the words from the prompt and form their own interpretations from it. This creation is how the AI has chosen to express the words I gave them. However, the AI lacks the emotion-driven aspect of expressive authenticity. Expressive authenticity includes writings and creations from the heart, which the AI generator does not have. Additionally, this picture lacks aura. Aura is when the author is not necessarily important but the atmosphere and history of the piece. I would say the creator (AI) is very important and is what makes this creation significant. The atmosphere surrounding this piece is not as important as the creator.

I think the AI was authentic in the sense of binding various images together to create a new piece, however, one thing that I emphasized when discussing authenticity in one’s work is adding their own creativity. I view authenticity as allowing one to be inspired by other pieces but ultimately taking that inspiration to create your own piece of work. In this case, the AI has taken bits and pieces from other existing creations. The AI has used keywords to copy and paste various existing pieces into a new one, which in my opinion is not true authenticity.

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I created the image following the prompt: AI making artwork on the website imagine.art. I decided to search for this picture since our prior class discussions about AI being "original" and "authentic" in making any type of art intrigued me and made me inquisitive. We discussed in class how artificial intelligence (AI) cannot genuinely be original since it utilizes all the data it has collected from the internet and uses images from the internet to "inspire" it in developing the image the user is requesting to create its "own" art. I observed that similar images appeared repeatedly when I created this phrase and that there were barely any distinctions between any of them. Each of the images featured incredibly realistic, future robots making and drawing works of art on an easel or even using a laptop or other piece of technology as their "artwork." This was one of the similarities between the images. Additionally, the majority of the robots in the photographs only had their torsos and upper bodies. Before looking up this phrase, I didn't think the prompt would produce the visuals that it did, ultimately I was surprised by the results. I had imagined a less complex robot making art, but the robots that were created were far more cutting-edge and futuristic than the ones we currently have. Furthermore, I saw that the robots' artwork was either extremely sophisticated or not displayed at all. It demonstrates, in my opinion, how artificial intelligence leverages technology to produce "own" art rather than original works. I believe that part of the art the AI generator is producing is the requirement that I input a particular phrase in order for it to produce an image based on what I inferred. Since the AI is creating images that the user imagined using their own imagination and there are no existing images that resemble the one generated, it exhibits "originality" to some level. When a user generates an image more than once, you will notice related images that were motivated by the phrase entered by the user. All of the photographs' backgrounds were blank; I had hoped the AI would have used more creativity when making the images. I had higher expectations for that end of things and didn't believe the AI generator would go as far as it did with the words I imputed. Overall, I believe that artificial intelligence (AI) picture generators are "authentic" to some level but will never be really "authentic" because they are creating images based on what is available online and doing their best to generate the specified image.

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I asked the AI-generated to develop an image of a cat taking a photo of a sunset. The cat is propped up on the edge of a mountain or canyon in a stance using its two front legs to take a picture. It's using a phone to capture the moment of the sunset. The sun is setting behind the mountains with red, orange, and yellow rays coming out. The cat is capturing a beautiful moment in nature. I notice that AI is not really good with specific details. For example, looking back at my picture, the cat's hand and phone look a little distorted. The cat is holding something that looks like a phone but is unclear. The cat's paws are hazy. Overall, I think the AI captured the main parts of what I wanted.

When first given the assignment, I already had an idea in mind. Since creativity isn't something I am good at, I decided to create an image of my favorite things: cats, sunsets, and taking pictures. I enjoy taking photos of sunsets and I just love cats. Since they are all in different categories, I wanted to produce an image that incorporated all three. I used the website wepik.com to generate my image. It was my first time using an AI image generator so I was not expecting much. At first, I imputed, “cat taking a picture of a sunset with a camera” however, the results were not up to par. I remember talking about how AI uses information and images already on the web in class. This was when I fully realized that because one image had a cat with human legs. As I discussed earlier, AI is not great with details. They capture the main parts of the given text and struggle with little details. I simplified my text to “cat taking a picture of a sunset” to make it easier for AI. The result I got was the same as the result before however, the image I picked was not something I expected because when I inputted the other text before, the results were bad. On the other hand, the image I picked was better than expected compared to the images.

I think the image is somewhat authentic but is also inauthentic. AI takes elements from photos on the web to create a whole new image. It is inauthentic in a way where AI takes a part of other images in the world. However, it is authentic in a way where it takes these elements to produce a whole new image based on my text. I believe AI is authentic to a certain extent because the images they create are all new.

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“Show me an surrealist painting of the moment the Roman Empire fell”

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“Show me an surrealist painting of the moment the Roman Empire fell”

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DALL-E

I requested DALL-E to produce a “surrealist painting of the moment the Roman Empire fell.” Mostly, I was curious to investigate the expressive authenticity of the algorithm for the program. Nominally, I’d say it’s authentic. I think that the idea of nominal authenticity doesn’t necessarily apply to AI generated work in the same way it does to human work. Ultimately, a Leonardo Da Vinci painting is a Leonardo Da Vinci painting, but AI work is its interpretation of what art looks like based on the massive compilation of art it has been presented. It uses other people's surrealist work for example to create its own understanding of surrealism. But in reality, that’s how any sort of human learning works too. Every artist receives inspiration from somewhere. So, because that human art production process mirrors the art production process of the AI, I would argue it is actually nominally authentic, maybe just in a slightly different way. The AI is using its own algorithm to produce an original image. Expressionally though, the question of authenticity becomes a bit more complicated. Either the AI is trying to express a “thought” or “opinion” on when the moment the Roman Empire fell, or through vague imagery, like a tombstone, and Roman armor, produce the appearance of nuance and illusion. On the surface, the image checks out; there’s a feathered Roman battle helmet, Greco/Roman style building in the background. Funny enough, it actually looks like the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, which is actually based on the architect's interpretation of a Roman ruin. There’s also a tombstone on a paint easel. The men in front of it are dressed in black and white, one appears to be morning, the other menacing, respectively. Point being, there’s a lot of complicated imagery to unpack. But, because DALL-E is only an image producing program, I obviously cannot ask what meaning is ascribed to the imagery it produced. My opinion is that the program is able to mimic the way human produced art portrays meaning, specifically in surrealist artwork. The imagery is vague enough that it could literally mean anything. I believe when I asked the program to represent the fall of the Roman Empire, it probably associated that with death (tombstone), mourning (man in black), war (soldier in helmet), and to make it clear that it was about Rome, it included the Greco/Roman building. So, it’s actually possible it wasn’t trying to create the appearance of meaning or actually assert any sort of meaning. It is more likely in my opinion that the AI sought to create something the viewer of the piece could ascribe authenticity or meaning to on their own. Because really, one cannot single out the moment the Roman Empire fell, so it would be fitting for DALL-E to leave it up to the viewer. I think that is the assertion it is making, and that’s the entire point of the painting. Based on that, my final opinion is that AI art is a hack. It makes what it believes art is “supposed” to look like. Anything it produces is a mimic designed to have the appearance of real art, even though AI cannot produce its own original ideas.

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Prompt: “a man enters an alternate reality to see himself get murdered by his best friend”

When generating these images through AI using my prompt, it is evident that the images were accurate in some aspects of the prompt while lacking or completely disregarded others. In all of the images, it shows a clear picture of multiple men in different universes. However, it is at least unclear to me what they are doing in the images or what the image is trying to show, with the first two looking as though they are just standing around and the last image showing two men sitting with one running. Using the same prompt, the AI was able to generate multiple images with slight differences between them, which I found to be quite interesting. All of the images create a different atmosphere with the artistic choices chosen, such as the first image giving a more ominous environment as a result of the dim and bland colors chosen when compared to the other two images that show more vibrant colors. To me, it is always surprising how AI is able to take simple words and phrases that you input, and actually turn them into images that could be mistaken as a human creating them. Although the AI did not completely paint an accurate image of what I hoped it would through my prompt, it continues to leave me baffled with the abilities that it has to create such intricate images. Before using the AI to create the images, I had already known the power of AI and its capabilities, but it did leave me surprised in the sense that the AI did not create a more accurate image. With the popularity and controversial opinions surrounding AI and its possibility of taking human jobs, I was somewhat optimistic that AI was going to create a more accurate image of what I imagined.

Creating the image was relatively easy, as the only task that was required was inputting words or phrases into the textbox. After that, the AI generated a few images of different variations of the prompt. The phrase that I chose to input into the AI was just an idea I had. However, I did attempt to be more specific in my prompt because I believed that it could possibly allow the AI to generate a more accurate image. I think from the images created, it shows the capabilities that AI has to take simple words and phrases and turn them into images. These applications that are using AI to perform different tasks show the evolution of AI and the future that AI has to be incorporated within our society. In a sense, I believe that these images are somewhat authentic because at least to my knowledge, these images that AI created are originals and simply not just copies of another piece of work. However, AI does use its past knowledge to create these images, but someone could also argue that humans also use their past experiences and knowledge to create “authentic” images. I think at the end of the day, it depends on what your definition of authentic is, which will ultimately help you in determining if the use of AI to create such products makes them authentic or not.
Although the images generated by AI are based on past images and algorithms, the images generated by AI are both nominally and expressively authentic. In regards to nominal authenticity, this aspect is focused on author and the time period in which the art was made. It is clear that the AI uses past images and combines them together to create one cohesive image that it believes satisfies the prompt provided. From the perspectives of some individuals, they believe that the AI is essentially copying certain aspects of past images, which makes the AI image lack originality and authenticity. However, I believe that although this is what AI may be doing, it is creating an original image, as many artists also take inspiration from past art of images that they have seen. To me, it is evident that the AI generator is nominally authentic because the author is clearly identified as AI and the time that it was made was when the prompt was provided by the user. When discussing if something is expressively authentic, it is focused on the connection between the art and the emotion of the audience from the art. Although for the images, the AI did not entirely create an accurate portrayal of the prompt that it was given, it still provided an image that it thought satisfied the user's visual intent. The images were also still able to give the audience some type of emotion when looking at the images. I think that the AI generated images are authentic in certain aspects and should be used as a tool that gives you more opportunities to create, especially if you lack the capabilities to do so yourself.

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“Generate a picture of Joe Biden shaking hands with Kim Jong Un”

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“Generate a picture of Joe Biden shaking hands with Kim Jong Un”

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I asked Open Art, a complementary AI art and image generator, to “Generate a picture of Joe Biden shaking hands with Kim Jong Un”. Here is what I got.

In the image generated by Open Art, Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, and Joe Biden, President of the United States, are depicted sitting by a table, happily shaking hands, an event which has never occurred before. Although President Biden’s face is covered by an indecipherable shape, he is still recognizable in this context by his suit and hairline. On the other hand, Kim Jong Un’s face shape and hairstyle are especially clear and convincingly realistic except for the fact that his face looks somewhat cartoony.

In addition to the unrealistic faces, Open Art fails to accurately portray emotions. The image’s background includes American flags – which lack realistic shadows and highlights – but surprisingly no North Korean flag is to be seen. I would assume that Kim Jong Un would feel especially upset about this exclusion. However, upon closer examination of President Biden and Kim Jong Un’s faces, it can be seen that both leaders are smiling and enjoying each other’s company. These emotions are unrealistic given President Biden’s current attitude towards communist and dictatorship countries like North Korea. There is a possibility that Open Art AI made the bold prediction that the two get along nicely, however, I doubt that Open Art has the capacity to do so in its current form. In reality, it is much more likely that images of the two figures were taken and altered from external sources. For example, pictures of Joe Biden shaking hands with former President Obama and Kim Jung Un shaking hands with former President Trump may have been combined through AI’s knowledge of what a handshake is. Although this method successfully created an image of two leaders shaking hands, the accurate portrayal of this event is compromised.

Ignoring the image’s technical quality and accuracy, Open Art AI has successfully created a fake image of a possibly real event. This concept in itself connects to the greater issue of AI image generators having the ability to plague the internet with fake information. In fact, it already has. When confirming whether or not Joe Biden and Kim Jong Un have ever met or shaken hands before, I found three AI generated images out of the first nine images to appear.

The image generated by Open Art AI is just one example of unauthentic news which AI tools are feeding into today’s Google search results. The consequences of this will only become worse when AI inevitably becomes more realistic through machine learning advancements and greater quantities of data being funneled into AI image generators.

Considering how and why this image was generated, it is important to think back to Denis Dutton’s definitions of authenticity. In a sense, this image has but also can’t have nominal authenticity. If anything, it is a prediction of a possible event which will either never occur or occur in the future. Thus, this idea and event has no time, date, and place, all of which are important features of nominal authenticity. On the other hand, this is a real image, generated by me, during a certain evening, at a certain school. In this sense, the generated image has nominal authenticity. Similarly, this image was generated with a purpose, to explore AI and to test the dangers of AI, giving it expressive authenticity.

In conclusion, the generated image has nominal and expressive authenticity but the idea and event portrayed lacks nominal authenticity and truth simply because it hasn’t happened before.

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Kim Jung Un and Joe Biden Open Art AI Image

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The image above is generated from the Free AI Image Generator. The image consists of a landscape with mountains and snow. There is also a lake at the bottom of the mountain that shows a reflection of the landscape. The image has an overall color tone of teal and blue, which matches the input of a “cool tone”. The input that was given to the AI only has two components, one is “cool tone” and the other is “in the mountains”. However, the AI gave more than what was being asked and was totally different than what was imagined. Since I did not specify what is on the mountains or what the setting is, the AI added snow on the mountain based on the word “cool” given. I was at first surprised by the color and tone that the website generated since cool tone colors include colors from yellowish green to purple, and the generator decided to go with teal. At first, I was trying to see what kind of landscapes the AI could generate with phrases like “sunset”, “sunset over the ocean”, and “foggy forest”. After figuring out the setting, I chose to give AI the colors. Instead of giving the generator super specific details on what I wanted the image to be, I decided to be vague and observe what the generator would create. It is kind of unexpected that the generator was able to understand what I was trying to say even though the phrase is not necessarily in proper grammar or a complete sentence. But at the same time, the AI was not able to come up with images that I wanted, indicating the amount of information needed for an AI to generate something similar to the original idea. I do not think the image is authentic since the AI only took pictures from the internet and combined them to meet the prompt given to them. We can tell that the generated picture is super blurry, which means that the AI is not mature enough to create high-resolution images based on the information on the internet. The image shows how AI image generators can generate something when given any kind of prompt, but it also shows how the accuracy is not too high and the information needed to create something close to the prompter’s idea is huge. It is not easy to describe an image with every detail, so we can say that it is almost impossible for an AI to generate an image that is exactly the same as the imagined input.

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In this image, there are two crying babies stuck in the sea which looks like they happen to be sitting on a “boat” that’s shaped like a dolphin. Surrounding the babies are their biggest nightmare: sharks. The babies’ faces are super red and there are sharks in the background that are oddly shaped. Shark movements are also portrayed in this piece by the white bubbles created. Something that was surprising was how the babies didn’t look as realistic as I expected them to be. Artificial intelligence uses data and information that is already on the internet to create something. With the plethora of information the internet has, including pictures of babies, I expected the babies to look more realistic. Their bodies look like inflated balloons put together. The faces, however, look semi-realistic. The image also depicts the babies sitting on a so-called “boat” but it’s not portrayed realistically. If the babies were stuck in the middle of the ocean, the boat wouldn’t really be in an upright position; it’s positioned in a way as if it was floating at the top of the ocean. I would say this piece of work is pretty unique just because it isn’t something that you see every day, which connects to Benjamin’s idea of aura.

This picture wasn’t really what I was expecting. I expected the crying babies to be stuck on an actual boat at the top and in the middle of the ocean with sharks jumping out of the water and getting close to the babies. Instead, they were placed deep down, in the middle of the ocean. I guess it’s kind of my fault though because I didn’t specify what I meant when I said the “middle of the ocean.” To arrive at this image, I just pictured a scenario in my head and put it into the AI. It was all random thoughts; I first put in other scenarios like aliens, space, monsters, etc. This final image was created with the phrase “crying babies stuck in the middle of the ocean with sharks and dolphins.” I chose this image because I thought it was interesting how it was both realistic and unrealistic at the same time.

I believe that the image shows that AI is very powerful because it is able to create something out of anything that I can put in. They are able to put a bunch of different things together in order to make one cohesive image. Also, it’s not like the image came out terrible either, it came out pretty solid and someone viewing it would be able to tell what phrases were put into the AI. I think this image would be expressively authentic to the creator as the phrases I put in were original to me and my creativity. According to Dutton, expressive authenticity is a true expression of an individual’s or a society’s values or beliefs. In this case, it expresses who I am and my thought process for getting this picture. However, I don’t think the image is authentic because the image came from multiple sources that the AI got from the internet. The idea is original to the creator, but the image that the AI created was not really original in the first place so I don’t believe that it is authentic.

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This image was created using the prompt “A Japanese craftsman making Momotaro denim jeans.” What is slightly surprising is that the rendered image is pretty close to what I imagine the prompt to look like. A Japanese craftsman surrounded by tools, working on a wooden bench, carefully cutting away at denim to create high-quality jeans. I’m not entirely sure if this is what an actual craftsman’s workshop would look like as I feel like there is a random assortment of tools in the background that aren’t related to the profession. What’s also interesting is that the Japanese man in the image is mainly wearing denim. I point this out because I personally went to Japan over the summer and bought Momotaro jeans and all the workers at the store were wearing at least one Momotaro product. The person who performed in-house tailoring was also decked out in their denim pants and jacket, so the image seems accurate.

When I was cycling through prompts for the image generator, I mostly stuck with content related to martial arts and fashion as those are the two things I enjoy the most. Another image I liked was a Japanese craftsman making boxing gloves, but I felt like this image was the most interesting and accurate of the bunch. This was also one of the few images that had minimal issues as a lot of the other photos I generated had melded elements. For some of the fighting prompts I used, the opponent’s hands were melded into each other. In others, the image didn’t render what I wanted to (probably because the information I input hadn’t been added to the database). For example, when I input the word “Rodtang” into the image generator, a picture of a car in a rural village was produced after a couple of minutes. Rodtang is actually a very famous Muay Thai fighter who is currently a world champion in the biggest Muay Thai promotion on the planet. Similarly, I input a prompt about Manny Pacquiao fighting Buakaw por Pramuk, an event that is scheduled for the coming months. While Pacquiao was presented in the images, Buakaw (another very famous Thai boxer) was not. Instead, it produced pictures of Manny Pacquiao fighting himself. I think this demonstrates that this AI, despite its capability to produce what I think is an accurate depiction of the scene above, is limited by the data it’s fed.

As far as the authenticity of this image, I don’t think it’s authentic. It’s not an actual picture of a real craftsman making jeans but rather an imitation based on the information that the internet could provide. Even when comparing it to artwork such as paintings and drawings, where artists don’t necessarily paint a real scene and use the information they’ve collected about the subject, it doesn’t have the decision-making process that artists do. Artists imagine a scene and include details they think are pertinent to the content they’re creating. This image generator produces details to capture the prompt but then doesn’t pay as much detail to the background. In the back, details become blurry because the computer is unsure what to produce. Artists on the other hand purposefully and carefully only add elements that enhance their pieces.

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At first, my prompt was  “an energetic human skeleton dancing with a fish”, which I came up with due to my curiosity about how the AI will deal with the contradiction caused by the human skeleton, which in my imagination always equals lifeless, and the word “energetic”. Moreover, I was trying to make the image more interesting so that the image may trigger some novel thoughts and discoveries. I expected to see a skeleton wearing clownish clothes and dancing with a  specific kind of fish, such as a whale, in a bustling place like a bar. Then I got image1, in which the blue lights surrounding the skeleton really surprised me and the facial expression of the skeleton exactly showed vitality in an unexpected way. This image made by AI is full of the sense of the unpredictable future and technology. The body movements of the skeleton look like it’s dancing in the ocean, and the fish seem like looking at the skeleton, creating an interaction between them. In image 1, the blue background which looks like the sea, fits the whole image concordantly. However, I wanted the background and the style to be more realistic, thus I added “in a bar, realism” in the description. Then I got image 2, a colorful skeleton dancing with a fish in a bar. The surprising red and orange lights that shed on them make the image look so vibrant. What surprised me this time was that I noticed the skeleton holding the fish, which made them look like they were waltzing and made them look funny when I saw the smile and the enchanting postures afterward. From my perspective, the new image fits my description and my expectations well, and also surprised me in some novel ways.

At first, I believed, to some degree, that the images made by AI are neither nominally authentic nor expressively authentic. Since I believed that AI was simply following my description and creating the image by collecting other artworks from its database and combining them with its algorithms. The creativity belongs to me so the images are not nominal authentic for AI. Then I found that if we consider the authenticity in such a general lens,  it will be too confusing and controversial. Since when we use our human-generated prompts to create images, AI only plays the role of a tool like pencils, which means the artwork is still created by me, although it is generated by AI, which means somehow  in this way we can define the art AI created has nominal authenticity because it’s my creation and I’m the author actually. It is the same as other paintings or photography artworks except I’m using a more advanced technology as a tool. Thinking in this way, the art AI generated also has expressive authenticity since it perfectly expresses my ideas and even is better than my imagination. Although AI is combining and learning from other artworks, it’s exactly the same as how humans create art. The essence of art is the collision and combination of different ideas and inventions, which is what AI is doing, although in a way some people do not accept it. And there’s no definite original art since we all build new constructions based on the old and indispensable inventions, thus there’s no need to be too strict with AI. Moreover, the images made by AI really surprised me, which both satisfied my expectations and also showed some creativity that is beyond my imagination, which I considered can strengthen my belief that AI's art somehow has nominal authenticity even not seeing it as a tool, since it can even generate some surprising details that are beyond my imagination, which makes me believe that it’s possible that when AI generate images with its own prompts, nominal authenticity still exists, although in that circumstance expressive authenticity may not exist due to the consensus of AI has no thoughts. Back to the current case, the images made by AI are aesthetic as well, which also has the possibility of triggering others’ thoughts, leading to further imagination and personal interpretations. Thus, as Dutton referred to expressive authenticity as “less to cut-and-dried fact and more to an emergent value possessed by works of art”,  I believe the art made by AI also has emergent value that shouldn’t be denied by humans due to our arrogance and reluctance to accept new technology.

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Prompt: Spotty and Blurry Vision (Freepik.com)
What first piqued my interest about the photo was the bright and cheerful colors that seemed to try to capture the viewer’s attention despite the different styles I filtered the photo through. The luminescent drop of water on the center of the image also created a picturesque image that seemed to only add on to its appeal. While this picture is appealing to the eye, it was unable to draw out what I had in mind. The inspiration for my prompt were the long nights of studying I did both at home and at Berkeley. With each passing hour, my eyes would slowly shut and leave an obscure vision for my eyes to see. I would see colorful dots as I closed my eyes, a colorful image that seemed ironic compared to the exhausted student. This story is something that AI couldn’t integrate into its image which makes it different from an authentic image. Something authentic is able to share the creator’s thoughts and emotions. It doesn’t simply illustrate a colorful image that goes against the vibe that the prompt should bring out. It couldn’t share the parts of my life that should’ve been the main content of the image, but seemed to overshadow it instead. Through more careful examination, I did see small details that did appeal to me. For example, the blurred background and less luminescent lights on the outer portions of the image did accurately portray the prompt of a blurry vision quite beautifully. Additionally, the reflections of the lights made the image almost surreal. Despite the eye-catching details however, the image fails to bring about the story that an authentic image should project. The simple tear on the middle of a teardrop seems to replicate the photos that one would typically see on the internet. While beautiful, it is of no relevance to the point of the image and seems to center the image around something appealing to the eye. It seems to disregard everything else as it centers around the brightest part of the image which thus fails to be expressively authentic. AI’s incapability to have human experience makes it unable to share the values and beliefs that a human artwork would express.
With this reasoning, I would like to establish that AI is unable to create authentic artwork. While it would be very resourceful in creating art for research projects and simple images, it can’t create authentic art that requires the piece to express something personal about the creator. While it is able to replicate the beautiful penmanship and painting skills of many artists, it can’t express the values they share.

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I used the prompt: “A little 10 year old Japanese girl with modern clothing of pink and white striped shirt and green shorts holding hands with a little 12 year old Japanese boy in traditional Japanese clothing, running through a field of flowers in front of a big Japanese bathhouse on a sunny day”. I noticed that the AI only captures the main points of the prompt such as the main characters (girl and boy), traditional clothing, and the setting of flowers and a traditional Japanese building in the background. They didn’t really capture the facial expression or rightly paired the clothing to the right character as I thought it would. When I first described the prompt, I specifically put which character has what clothing and the AI would either switch the clothes or just randomly put different clothing on the characters but would still keep the same color palette. What was surprising to me was that the AI captured most of what I expected the image to be. They capture where I thought the building and characters would be placed and the exact flowers they would use when I described  the ethnicity of the characters. Something unexpected to me was that the AI didn’t really put a face to the characters. The faces of the characters would either be blurred or it would only have the basic features of eyes, nose, and lips. The recorded results compared with what I was thinking before the search were somewhat similar since the result captured the majority of what I was thinking of. My process in arriving at the image I have chosen was that I kept changing the prompts and adding more details to make it easier for the AI to actually depict what I have imagined, and I chose the image that is most similar to the image I have imagined. The actions and settings in this image are most similar to what I have imagined in my mind. The first part of the sentence I used was to describe the characters and their appearances. The second part of the prompt was to describe what they would be doing at someplace. I went into detail about the type of clothing, the cultural clothing, and the colors of each clothing piece. I specified which character wears what clothing and I also wrote down their ethnicity so the characters would look closer to how I want them to be. I then described their actions as “holding hands” and “running through a field of flowers” for the AI to capture their movement. I also described the setting into a little bit of detail for the AI to paint the background in a similar background to how I want it to look. The image tells me that the AI can only capture the majority parts of the prompt but not accurately or entirely. The AI would get the setting, actions, and the number of characters, but they can’t get the clothing, colors, and faces right. When it goes into small details, the AI isn’t able to catch it. I think to some degree, the image is authentic, because the AI is just creating a new image of their given prompt just like how we would write or draw something when we are given a prompt. We would take pieces and bits of what we have seen before and add it to our own piece to make it our own, and that’s how the AI also generates.

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To develop my AI generated image, I searched for a “shiba inu in a giant bowl of poke behind a sunset in the jungle”. In my AI generated photo, I notice fish, maybe some sort of lake, a shiba inu in the bowl, and a tropical/naturistic background. Since I was heading home for Labor Day weekend, I planned on grabbing poke bowls in San Jose, which is essentially a bowl of rice, raw fish, and toppings. I also enjoy watching sunsets and shiba inu dogs, so I slapped them together into one phrase.

The AI image developed actual fish, as if it was freshly caught out of a lake. In order to produce this image, AI used knowledge from the internet to create my random query, essentially pulling inspiration from other pictures and descriptions floating on the web. I do see some errors in their inspiration, though, because I have no idea what the blue area in the bowl is supposed to be. I imagine it could be related to the actual fish in the bowl. Since poke is from Hawaiian cuisine, I also see the cultural aspects that the AI failed to display. The AI showcased their version of poke and how all of the subjects in my phrase interchanged with one another, which is also expressive in its own way.

The image is also missing the sunset aspect, but I noticed that the more details a query has, the more likely that the image will lack one or more aspects. I also noticed that my query has limited ideas and art because I was using a free AI. However, within 20 minutes of playing around with the AI, I was asked to either pay or sign up to continue using it, so I wonder what paid AI images would produce. That is a limited factor that contributes to this assignment because there are better or worse quality AI websites. This specific image was generated under the “fantasy” filter, but I used the same query for the other art styles. In the other art styles, totally different images were developed which I thought was interesting to see. Even the option of other art styles leads me to question another factor of authenticity, because my AI image would be recycled through different filters.

The particular shiba inu in this image is quite cute, but other styles of art showed me creepy or cut off images of the shiba inu. Some images focused on the poke aspect, sunset, jungle, or shiba. Since I generated various images of the same query, I got to see 5+ versions of images that the AI could come up with. The more I continued searching, the images continued to display how the AI itself interpreted my image, which is proof of some expressive authenticity. I believe that the image also lacks any aura. Since it is AI generated, I think it would be impossible to have authenticity on its own because of how connected it is with the creator. In addition, I still agree with Sigal Samuel’s article, “What happens when ChatGPT starts to feed on its own writing” in terms that 100% authenticity is not possible. The image is nominally authentic in the way that it was uniquely developed from my query, but was also inspired by or used other resources to ultimately create the image. In my AI image, there are definitely aspects of both expressive and nominal authenticity, but in order for the AI image to show its authenticity, it was also inspired by the unlimited perspectives and opinions on the internet.

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Above Picture: photos generated by "Free AI Image Generator"       Below Picture: Mandela effect on Pikachu (black tip tail is the feature that shouldn’t exist)

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Pikachus everywhere. Using Free AI Image Generator I created a series of photos around the theme of “Pokemon playing”. One extremely noticeable thing about each image is that a figure of a Pikachu - no matter how badly disfigured it may be - exists in every image. Considering that Pikachu is the mascot for the Pokemon franchise, it is not a surprising thing for the famous creature to be featured in every photo. However, there are other Pokemon that the Pokemon franchise has continuously used as “sub-mascots” for decades now such as Charizard, Eevee, and Mewtwo, however, they are nowhere to be seen in the above photos. This is quite unexpected as those Pokemon are also routinely considered to be very recognizable and popular among non-Pokemon fans.

Another unexpected thing I noticed was the lack of correct representation for any Pokemon in existence. The only recognizable figure is Pikachu and all figures besides it have simply nitpicked certain Pokemon’s characteristics in order to generate a creature that aims to have at least some resemblance to the common idea of a Pokemon. This tells me that Free AI Image Generator may not have enough content fed into its system to show a complete Pokemon as even the Pikachus that it created are lacking in conception in some way, shape, or form.

Moving on from my first impression, I began to notice small mishaps in the AI’s art. A disturbing one to see was the use of the incorrect Pikachu tail. This may not seem like a huge deal to someone who isn’t an avid Pokemon fan, but Pikachu’s black-tipped tail in the series of images is part of a common Mandela effect that surrounds Pikachu. The real Pikachu has a completely yellow tail, however, some fans have reported seeing a black-tipped tail as the real Pikachu and were surprised when learning that Pikachu didn’t in fact ever have a tail like that. This gives me the impression that the AI was fed incorrect content and in turn, spewed out misleading photos that do not resemble reality. This is considerably disturbing as the increased spread of AI art across the internet may actually hold incorrect features of historical art, therefore tainting the real image’s reputation and value.

An interesting thing I noticed as well was the use of the shiny form of Pikachu, which uses gold instead of yellow as its main color. This was a small but interesting feature that I was surprised the AI could discern. This information tells me that the Free AI Image Generator is in fact able to acknowledge the existence of differences in similar photos.

The final thing I would like to mention in the photos is the commonality of the green forest or grassy settings. It is very telling that the AI was able to notice that the most common region for Pokemon to live in was forests and grasslands but it brings to attention that the AI was still not able to think deeply about the diversity of life in the Pokemon world. Pokemon live in all kinds of environments such as deep in the ocean or far out in the desert, but the AI was not able to reflect that diversity in its images. If the AI could not represent this diversity of life and figures in a fictional setting where everything can and does exist, what stops it from not representing that diversity in the very rigid and real setting of human life and figures?

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The prompt for my DreamStudio AI was to generate a colored sketch of an old market that sells fruits, vegetables, flowers, and antiques. The scene was set in winter, just after snow, when many customers come out and purchase goods. The AI was accurate in the following aspects. First, as I instructed it to come up with a sketch, it generated a painting instead of a realistic picture, demonstrating its ability to differentiate between drawings and photographs. Second, it did produce a scene that could be easily identified as a market. There are fruits and vegetables piled in boxes, and customers are looking around as if they are going to purchase something. Third, it did reflect the season I assigned to this scene, which is winter. The customers are all wearing warm clothes, and there is snow falling down.

However, there are also many things that the AI failed to achieve. For example, I asked the AI to show vendors selling flowers and antiques, something that is unusual in a standard farmer’s market. The AI ignored my instructions as these two types of sellers were not in its stereotypical imagination of a farmer’s market. The AI also failed to comprehend my direction to set the scene “after a snow”. The white dots on image, rather, exhibit a market “during a snow,” demonstrating the AI’s inability to capture certain subtleties in human language. Furthermore, some details on this image are just incorrect. For instance, many of the fruits are unrecognizable, as this AI just presents fruits as random colorful round objects. The structure of the wooden box on the right is also incorrect: two boxes on the right seem to be merging together, producing a situation that is impossible in reality. Moreover, the building in the back fades into the tree, making the image fairly bizarre if one were to examine this image in detail. Finally, the AI failed to understand the idea of a sketch. The lines are stiff, and the coloring is too straightforward. The image generated by this AI, in general, was unable to reflect a painter’s intricate touch.

In conclusion, the AI generated an overall satisfactory image. Many aspects of my instructions are clearly reflected in the image, and one can certainly match the generated image with my prompt. Yet, some details are still lacking. Certain spots on the image are so unrealistic that one can immediately sense that it is not painted by a human being.

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150604_a colored sketch of an old market selling fruits, _xl-1024-v1-0

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Prompt: a wolf, minimalistic colorful organic forms, energy, assembled, layered, depth, alive vibrant, 3D, abstract, on a light blue background

The images generated by AI are authentic with their originality, but it is hard to see creativity and contemplation in those images. AI should be an independent subject which can be responsible for its own work, which means that AI creates the work somewhat independently and the originality makes the work of AI authentic. However, the definitions of authenticity and creativity do not relate with or constrict each other strongly. Despite the authenticity of the work of AI, it is hard to see the creativity of AI image generators, which means that AI just follows the prompt to draw the exact object, instead of trying to understand and show more complicated and abstract meaning behind the prompt.

In this picture generated by AI, we can clearly see the colorful wolf, which presents the description of the picture very precisely. However, if we see this image for a longer time, the image is a little bit boring because there is nothing inspiring people to think more and image more. The picture just visualizes the prompt in a colorful way to help the viewers to see the prompt in a more intuitive way.

If we try to insert more abstract prompts into an AI image generator, the image will represent the lack of creativity and contemplation more clearly. For example, for the ‘definition of authenticity’ prompt, the resulting picture is just the word ‘authenticity’ in a dictionary, instead of a picture that can help people understand the definition of authenticity. AI image generators cannot understand more abstract human thoughts or add creative elements into images to enable the images to show more meaning, power and contemplation.

Despite the lack of creativity and ability to show contemplation, images generated by AI are still both nominally and expressively authentic. For nominal authenticity, we can clearly define the author of images as the AI, or the combination of the person who created the description and the AI, and we can also identify the time, website and even a unique code of the picture, all of which are features of nominal authenticity. It is true that the images generated by AI are combinations and adjustments of tons of images that exist in the database, but even for human painters who painted portraits, the process of creating portraits is similar to AI image generators. The prompt is the person who is in the portrait, and the artists play the same role as an AI image generator to create a portrait. Therefore, the nominal authenticity of images generated by AI should not be denied.

Moreover, the images are also expressively authentic, since those pictures generated by AI can also show beauty and aesthetic, which delivers value to audiences. We, as audiences, can even engage in the art work, by changing the description in the AI, which means that we can interact with the image and be part of the art work to express, which is the signal of expressive authenticity.

After the advent of AI language and image generators, the debate on originality and authenticity has existed in our society. The concern but the concern should not be the obstacle that prevents us from exploring more possibilities of AI generators. Although AI may not be treated as a subject which has the same rights as a human being, it should be treated as an independent subject which can generate authentic articles or images. Although AI is not creative enough to generate more abstract and interesting images, its authenticity should not be denied.

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"a little girl wearing a white dress dancing in a cage on the balcony under the sky and clouds." This phrase brought me the picture above. To an ordinary person, not specializing in painting only focuses on the overall sense of the picture, it is undoubtedly an impressive presentation. Fluffy clouds were above the gray sky and below was a delicate doll-like little girl on the balcony. The girl in white dresses paired with a slightly depressed hollow cage forms a kind of artistic collision of beauty.

Also, the AI generator naturally combines cartoon and realistic brushstrokes, resulting in delicate, unobtrusive images that are full of detail. The folds of the hair and clothes are exquisitely drawn. This is often what many AI painting proponents and ordinary people see, and I agree with their comments, because after all, this is also my initial impression. However, as a digital art creator, I notice some evidence that more clearly indicates that this is imitating the work of machines that incorporate human paintings rather than self-produced creations. Neither of these works can stand up to scrutiny, starting with the hair trend, which does not correspond to reality and does not flow smoothly. Although the overall shape is correct, many abrupt hair strands are in the details, and braids are created out of nothing. Secondly, the difficulty that AI cannot overcome for the time being, the description of hands and feet, is fully reflected in these two pictures. Further discussion, the overall lighting and shadow of the picture are not in line with reality. It's more like a child's collage with elaborate pieces than a complete considerable painting.

Finally, coming to the discussion of my understanding of AI authenticity through this exercise and many previous readings. First of all, AI painting and AI writing are different and should not be confused because AI writing can access only the free articles on the network, and the copyright of the authors of the books will not be infringed. It is like a network searcher that better organizes the information for us. So, I think it has a certain nominal authenticity. On the contrary, no matter which generator, the AI paintings learn from drawings of different artists without permission, knead them together to create new pictures, without giving anyone credit, which is an apparent confusion of history and copyright infringement. Some people say that human artists also borrow from each other, which is true, but there is a concept of "over-borrowing" in the painting community. If an artist references another artist's work without his authorization or consent, he will be condemned, so why should AI be exempt? Therefore, AI painting is not nominal authenticity at all. However, people often have an image in their head when they type descriptors, and they're constantly tweaking it to get there, so AI painting retains partial expressive authenticity.

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At first this was not my original prompt, I wanted my AI generated image to be about something random and just basically play with the AI but then I got sidetracked and input the prompt “woman sitting at the park looking at the moon”.  For the most part I used the same prompt but it would give me a woman staring directly at me so I used a different site. I got better results but they still did not really appeal to me. So I added the phrase “straight haired” to the beginning of the prompt and it gave me some interesting results. For the most part I was slightly changing the part to see what would get emphasized more. The AI really emphasized the straight hair which would mostly be the only thing you would see which would result in inaccurate benches or trees. I then removed that phrase from the beginning and I found this one. It really appealed to me because the whole scenery is beautiful and even though it was not exactly what I had imagined it was still a very nice image that I personally enjoyed. Coincidentally enough tonight is the Blue Moon that everyone has been talking about so it just makes sense that the moon is unusually big. The scenery is very beautiful and I appreciate that the trees are well lit. Even though it is supposed to be a so-called “park” I do not see any grass in front of the woman so my first thought is that it may be a sandpit but then again there is no playground. It seems like the AI forgot the fundamentals of a park. The moon is a very beautiful part of this image and it resembles the Blue Moon that is currently happening. The AI most likely took the most recent information of a moon and it concluded that info on this image. I am thankful for this AI image creator because I personally cannot draw so it is amazing how I can generate an image like this. Even though the image is not an exact representation of a park or the image that I first imagined  it is still a very good image with how the scenery surrounds this woman.

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Images made using Fotor AI Image Generator

Prompt: A grand castle floating in the sky

The images above, created by AI, each show a grand castle, as the AI was told to create. Each image shows the castle with a sky with clouds as a background, and some kind of trees or body of water surrounding the castle. None of the images follow exactly what I was looking for in the prompt, which was a grand castle floating in the sky. The grandness of the castle has been accurately captured by the AI, but it failed to depict the castle floating in the sky, untethered to the ground. I tried several different searches, from “a castle on a floating island” to “a castle in the sky” but none of these prompts led to an image that exactly matched the description of a castle floating in the sky. It seems that the AI can only create images of castles on the ground, because those are the only types of images that it has access to across the internet: images or art of floating castles are not common. This image has an aura of its own in the sense that I was expecting to see an AI-generated image, but if I had given a human artist a similar prompt to work with, I may have gotten something much closer to the image in my mind, giving the human art a more authentic aura. While a human does, the AI does not have an imagination, and is limited by the information it has access to through its database and the internet; it cannot make something that is unnatural or unusual. In other words, compared to what a human could create, the AI art lacks a sense of expressive authenticity. Although not in every aspect, the AI has failed to have a sense of nominal authenticity to its art because the art seen does not match the nominal description provided. Alternatively, these images are nominally authentic to the extent that they were created by AI, and that they are different to any images of castles that already exist on the internet. There is also a sense of authenticity that the AI may have combined images from other sources to create an entirely new image that doesn’t exist. However, this combination of images also takes away from the expressive authenticity of the art because there is no originality of expression found in the art created by the AI. It can also be said that these images are inauthentic to the given prompt and did not capture the scene that I was looking for. I consider this image to be more inauthentic than authentic, firstly because the AI was unable to accurately create what I was looking for, and secondly because the AI had no originality in creating the image; it only used what was already available to it in order to create the image. It is possible to consider different definitions and to categorize AI art as either authentic or inauthentic, but using definitions of nominal and expressive authenticity and aura, it can be concluded that AI-generated images and artwork are not authentic.

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THE AI-GENERATED IMAGE SUCCESSFULLY PORTRAYED what I had envisioned in my head. This image can be interpreted in various ways: humankind looks up at the wonders of the sky and finds a light shining down upon him; is it the sun? Is it a celestial-like message? Divine perhaps? I, for one, see a man looking beyond the earthly objects surrounding him (trees, in this case) and realizing there is more to life than what lies here. The fun part is that it's open to interpretation. It could be that he realizes that there is a supernatural power out there looking down on him and giving him a message; in this case, if you’re imagination is wild, you’d assume this is Adam - the first human. It could be that a man simply acknowledges that the universe is vast and is almost negligible to it in comparison - like the mass of an electron relative to a proton. Or it could be that someone is lost in darkness and is looking towards the light (at the end of the tunnel). Many interpretations of this creation simply arose from “a man looking into the light with trees around him.

“Why did I choose this? I thought it would be poetic and open-ended. However, I did have a more tangible reason for choosing this phrase: I want to send a message. Whatever issue you’re dealing with or hardship you’re going through is so minuscule in the grand scheme of things. There are 8 billion people on the earth; everyone is struggling with something - every one of them. Like the man in the image, if you look beyond yourself and learn to see the bigger picture - what lies beyond your surroundings, maybe you’ll learn to see that your problems tremendously scale down.

I believe that this image accurately represents the free AI used to generate this image as the image isn’t this thorough, extremely detailed picture that you’d expect from a machine that is supposed to be more skilled than actual artists. Although with that said, I do believe that this creation is authentic, it's authentic to me. I thought of the idea (emphasis on the “I”), and then the AI was only a means to an end. It brought my creation to reality; it was my tool. Similarly, an artist’s tool is his brush, and a photographer’s tool is his camera. Mine was the AI generator. Who’s to say this is inauthentic?

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The prompt that I decided to input into OpenAI was “an artwork that expresses the authentic values of its maker”. I picked this query from the reading we were instructed to do in class by Dennis Dutton titled “Authenticity in Art”, where in his concluding remarks he references Leo Tolstoy’s thesis on how artistic value is achieved. Right off the bat, I was surprised that the AI chose to depict an artwork of a man creating artwork, but considering the query, it does make sense. First impressions, it seems that AI took certain words from the prompt more literally, such as “maker” and “artwork”. Choosing this prompt, I was expecting more so a singular work of art that was more abstract in nature, putting more weight on the words  “expresses” and “values”. I ran this prompt through the AI a multitude of times, and each of the images that the AI produced incorporated the brown, paper-like collage of shapes and other geometric structures as depicted behind the maker as well as the work he is currently composing. This was also another surprise to me, as I was in all honesty I kept trying in hope for the AI to come up with a larger variety of interpretations of the prompt, possibly one that was closer to my original expectation. Instead of the colorful, dynamic, and more impressionistic piece that I had anticipated, the AI generated something much more seemingly vintage in terms of aesthetic, unsaturated or dull in color, and based on more standard shapes rather than figures and the such. This was one of the first images that the AI sprouted, and even after having a hefty amount to choose from in the end, I ended up with this image. I chose this piece as, though it was relatively far from what I thought the AI would create, it follows the query that I inputted in actually a quite endearing way. Though not ‘expressive’ in the more vivid and radiant way that I image ‘expressive’ being artistically interpreted, it was in the busy but impressive mess of shapes that the ‘maker’ prides himself in behind him. The AI chose to actually include ‘maker’, who dons an artist’s apron and gloves that he wears extensively in his craft. I believe that this artwork is not completely authentic as it was produced by an AI, and thus with no real original creator and derived from millions of other works of art. In a more expressive sense, however, I do think that it is authentic in the message it conveys. There is no original creator to base what they wished to express from their work from, but the piece can bring out a different kind of expression from the one who is spectating the piece. The way in which the person observing the piece can in a sense make it expressionally authentic if it communicates to them in a way that is meaningful. To me, the piece makes me feel connected to the maker depicted in the image, as he is so deeply engrossed in his art, I can feel how authentic his art is to him.

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I used Create-AI Image Generator for my platform to experiment with framing an AI image. I tested out varied features and permutations of query language before settling on my final chosen image. The image that is demonstrated from the use of AI depicts 5 children frolicking and playing around on a beach during a beautiful sunsetting sky. The ocean is a dark blue contrasted by red, orange, yellow, and pink colors in the sky. The waves from the ocean crash sporadically towards the children running along the beach. The children’s body language portrays their excitement from being together surrounded by the beautiful and enchanting setting. I notice the way in which the children are all running towards the sun with a very hopeful effect included in the photo. I also notice that part of the reason that these children seem to be so excited is because all of nature combines, the sunset, the water, the sand, and the flora, seem to gel together in a perfect  manner. The elements worked extremely well together and seemed to look out of a magazine or animated movie.

I believe that  the surprising or unexpected part of this image is the way the execution was perfected by the AI. I am shocked that it was able to follow my commands and gradually produce a final result that I was happily satisfied with. I also was surprised at how well the image conveyed emotion considering it was created by Artificial Intelligence. It ended up generating the precise colors I had desired for the sunset, the desired body language and action of the children running excitedly near the water, and also generated the perfect time of day and sand and ocean that I had also wanted for my created photo. When comparing the recorded results to what I had been thinking before the search, I genuinely did not expect the AI to perform  the execution that I ended up  receiving from this AI website. This was my first experience ever using AI to create art or a photo so I had rather low expectations. Create-AI Image Generator did a fantastic job and I didn’t really know what to expect or predict and was happy it was able  to execute my photo nearly as well as it did. I was pleasantly impressed and surprised by my chosen AI’s ability and talent to continually perfect the photo as I gave it commands for additional details or other enhancements or changes.

When reflecting on  my process of arriving at the image, I credit my love for the beach, my obsession for nature, and my gratitude for my vast time spent at the beach during my childhood.  The reasoning behind my decision to choose the photo was because it incorporated some of my most favorite memories and  things in my life. I absolutely adore sunset time at the beach when the colors reflect on the ocean, therefore I knew the time and place that I wanted to be included in my AI piece of art. I also knew that I wanted my produced piece of art to remind me of happy memories from my childhood, so I had the AI show children joyfully playing together because my most cherished memories are at the beach playing with my siblings and best friends.

The reasoning behind the phrases that I chose to use really are driven back to my overall idea to recreate and produce something that incorporates aspects that are so essential to what I love. I included phrases such as sunset, beach, ocean, excited children, and happy to ensure that I would get the product of all of the factors I wanted to be included for. This image strongly speaks in a positive light to the  AI I used to create it because going into this assignment, I originally had low expectations of the AI’s ability to produce the idea I passionately had in mind. The AI really advanced my  standards and expectations leaving me with a confident sense of reliability for AI art to produce work that satisfies the user’s desire.

I personally  think the image that the AI created for me  is authentic because I kept plugging in more and more commands and details to be added into the photo and each time it would change the produced piece of art until it was basically customized to fit my precise vision for my work of art based on the phrases that I plugged into the computational device. Overall, after the process of using and then reflecting on my experience with AI, I can say that in my personal experience, AI really exceeded my expectations and I now feel confident in trusting its ability to produce authentic, excellent, and personalized work.

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There were a lot of high expectations for the images that the AI website would generate based on my prompts, however, I was rather disappointed after experiencing several issues with how the images came to be. I tried various prompts that sadly generated images filled with distorted faces and colors. These issues intensified when I tried using the prompt ‘Love’, which generated images with the literal word ‘Love’ in them. They also appeared more like photographs taken from Google rather than original AI images. Here is when I started questioning the authenticity of the AI-generated image website. We could blame it on the vagueness of the prompt or the fact that a free website is not as extraordinary as a paid one, but for a second, I thought I was getting scammed by a computer. What if it was really using Google images instead?

I decided to try one more time, this time with a more descriptive and simple prompt: "Show a kid playing with a puppy in the forest." This time, the results are more promising. There were two images that came up, both looked alright, but ultimately I selected the image of a child holding a puppy's leg in a forest setting (as seen above). Later I realized that the image contains a glaring error – the puppy has five legs! Funny, yes, it made me laugh. But this weird, and humorous, mistake would then make me doubt the intelligence of AI and its data sources.

After all of this journey of trying to find the perfect AI image, I have come to realize a few points. If I want to reflect on its authenticity, then I need to figure out the context of this image, so I tried asking myself as the “author” what was I trying to express by writing the prompt: “Show a kid playing with a puppy in the forest”. But then I stopped and thought again, “Am I actually the author of this picture?” I do not know how to answer the question because, first, I did not make the image, it was the AI. Second, if I were to make an image of a kid playing with a puppy in the forest, I would definitely not have drawn a puppy with five legs. Therefore, there's no "aura" in the artwork. Not only does the silly mistake of a five-legged puppy diminish the artwork's aura, but it also fails to evoke emotions or meaningful contemplation. I say this not only because it looks like a regular Google picture -maybe a little more distorted than usual-, but because there is nothing to stare at or contemplate. The art style looks almost fake and the quality gives it away. In conclusion, because the images generated did not meet expectations, they present errors and lack of emotional aura; there is no authenticity in the artwork.

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This project was developed under the assumption that generative AI has enabled a significant change to the relationship between words and images, both worthy of exploring as a rhetorical vehicle and demanding critical attention. Here are some of our initial concepts and impressions: