First things first--art is innately human. If a human didn't create it, it's not art. That means nature is not "art" (though that doesn't mean you can't notice

First things first--art is innately human. If a human didn't create it, it's not art. That means nature is not "art" (though that doesn't mean you can't notice the beauty in nature). The artistic process is complicated, and which role a person plays in relation to the creation of a piece of artwork varies. Some people are the actual workers who go about creating the thing. Some are collaborators who help out the worker with small pieces of the artwork. Others are simple curators who bring people together. Then you have those who commission an art piece, and it's what their role in this process is that I find myself conflicted on--are they deserving the title of artist because they funded it's creation, or had the initial idea for the piece? If your answer is yes--that they are considered an artist for commissioning a piece, then I think you can argue that a person who uses an AI model to generate art is actually creating art. But if your answer is no--that simply having an idea and the means to bring it about (through money, or an AI model that was trained off the works of millions of artists without their consent), then I think you have a basis to argue that simply prompting these models to generate art, is not enough to constitute art. The piece wasn't generated by a human, and the prompt given to the model wasn't from someone who actually contributes to the creation of the art piece, therefor the result is not art. Now what if someone first prompts a model to generate an image, and then spends a lot of time tweaking said image in Photoshop--are they still only a commissioner at that point? Well I suppose they aren't. But what about repeatedly prompting an AI until it gives you a close enough replica of what you imagined? Is this process practically the same touching up the piece yourself? I'd argue no, and I'd say this is simply the role of a commissioner telling the worker they're off the mark, and that the worker needs to start over. Anyways that is a lot of text, but I think my point is this--analyzing the role a person plays while prompting an LLM can help inform if the output of the model is actually art.