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ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing ArtsISSN (Online): 2582-7472
Artificial Intelligence-Generated Art and the Question of Authorship Gayathri B 1 1 Department
of Computer Science, Meenakshi College of Arts and Science, Meenakshi Academy
of Higher Education and Research, India 2 Assistant
Professor, Department of Computer Science, Meenakshi College of Arts and
Science, Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research, India 3 Department of Computer Science, Meenakshi College of Arts and
Science, Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research, India
4 Meenakshi College of Physiotherapy, Meenakshi Academy of Higher
Education and Research, India
5 Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Meenakshi Ammal
Dental College and Hospital, Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and
Research, India
6 Faculty of Education, Shinawatra University, Thailand, Research Fellow,
INTI International University, Malaysia
1. INTRODUCTION The use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has made a big change in most of the creative industries, such as the visual arts, music, literature, and digital media. Historically, art making has been regarded as a distinctly human activity that is based on imagination, expressing feelings and interpreting cultures. Nonetheless, the recent advances in machine learning, deep neural networks, and generative algorithms have allowed the computational systems to generate works of art that can be considered similar to, or even competing with, the creative works created by humans. Such trends have brought some basic questions regarding creativity, authorship, and the problem of technology in the production of art. With the further involvement of AI systems in the creative process, the line between human and machine creativity is becoming more and more indistinct Hook (2024). The art created using artificial intelligence is known as artificial intelligence-generated art and is generated with the help or without the help of computational systems that are trained on grand collections of pictures, texts, or other cultural artifacts. Such systems observe patterns, styles, and structural relations in the training content and then produce novel artistic outputs that mirror the characteristics that were learnt. Convolutional neural networks Abbott (2023), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and more recently diffusion-based generative models have shown impressive abilities in generating visually engaging pieces of art, style transitions and artful visual arrangements. These models are able to generate new images, recreate classic artistic styles, and even create new visual aesthetics that were not directly coded by the developers Kretschmer et al. (2025). The growing application of AI to the art field has raised a significant controversy over the notion of authorship. Under traditional artistic practice, the person who conceives and creates the work is normally recognized as the author. In the AI-generated art, however, there can be several participants in the creative loop. Software developers are parts of this group that create the algorithms, data curators that assemble the training datasets, artists that devise prompts or structure the generation process, and the AI models to algorithmically produce the final visual output Walczak and Cellary (2023). This complicated mixture begs hard questions regarding the individual that is to be considered as a creator of the piece of art. The authorship is further complicated when the outputs of AI systems are produced under minimal human supervision as autonomous generation. Amongst legal and intellectual property issues, there are more cultural and ethical consequences of the AI-generated art. Critics claim that AI art works are not creative or deep, as they are based on the patterns constructed out of the existing art works Kalniņa et al. (2024). Some consider AI as an effective collaborative instrument that opens creative opportunities and allows new creative experiments. Other factors covered in the debate include the bias in the data set, cultural appropriation, and the economic effect that might be imposed on the traditional artists and creative industries Alotaibi (2024). Considering these changing issues, it is vital to focus on the technological processes, ethical aspects, and philosophical views on the issues of AI-created art and authorship. 2. Related Work The advent of artificial intelligence in the artistic creation has raised much academic interest among computer science, digital humanities, art theory, and intellectual property law researchers. The initial studies in the field of computational creativity were mainly centered on rule-based generative systems and algorithmic art in which artists and computer programmers created mathematical processes to generate visual patterns and abstract pieces. The development of algorithmic aesthetics was pioneering work that showed how computer could create artistic forms by application of deterministic rules, fractal mathematics and procedural graphics Hutson and Lang (2023). These early systems also yielded creatively fascinating results but had a low creative bandwidth since they could not adapt through learning but used hard programmed rules. Due to the creation of machine learning and deep neural networks, the study of AI-generated art grew to a large extent Xu and Jiang (2022). Deep learning models also allowed computers to discover artistic styles and visual representations straight out of big data collections of images. The creation of neural style transfer techniques was one of the contributions that influence it because one system can compose parts of one image and the artistic style of the other. This method showed that neural networks were able to reproduce stylistic features like brush strokes, color distributions and texture patterns that existed in classical paintings. The methods were later applied in other studies to produce new pieces of art instead of merely modulating existing images Ernesto and Gerardou (2023). The other significant breakthrough in the realm of AI-assisted artistic creation was the so-called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). GANs were introduced as a system that comprises two components a generator and discriminator, and the system is capable of producing very realistic images by acquiring the statistical distribution of the training samples Lacey and Smith (2023). GAN architectures have been used in several studies involving the synthesis of artistic images, generation of portraits, and style exploration. The examples of research projects and digital art platforms have shown that the GAN-based systems can generate artworks, which are hard to tell whether created by a human being or a machine. The emergence of these developments has contributed to the increased acceptance of AI as a creative medium in the modern digital art practices. In recent years, the ability of AI-generated art has been expanded with the help of diffusion models and large-scale generative systems Cao et al. (2023). Research that looks at diffusion-based systems points to the fact that such systems can generate structures of visual output that are highly detailed and contextually relevant, and that this greatly extends the range of computational creativity O’Dea (2024). Table 1 presents previous research on artificial intelligence (AI) generated art, creativity, and authorship controversies. Meanwhile, researchers have started to research the social, ethical, and legal consequences of such technologies. Table 1
3. Development of Artificial Intelligence in Artistic Production 3.1. Evolution of generative algorithms and creative AI systems The evolution of artificial intelligence in the creation of art has passed through various technological levels such as early generative algorithms and procedural art systems. During the 1960s and 1970s computer scientists and artists explored algorithmic art, as a visual pattern which was generated using a mathematical formula or rule-based logic, or even by a deterministic process. The programming languages and mathematical models that were initially employed to create abstract images and patterns by early innovators in the field of computational art include fractals, mathematical transformations, and stochastic processes. The prototype generative systems proved that computers have the capability to generate aesthetically pleasing forms though they were constrained in creative flexibility since they relied much on pre-programmed rules and instructions provided by human creators. Generative art systems grew more sophisticated and could create dynamic and interactive visual output as computing power and sophistication of algorithms improved. Scientists started combining randomness, evolutionary methods, and generative models where rules are followed to recreate elements of innovativeness and diversity in creative works. Evolutionary art systems, such as those, employed genetic algorithms to go through the visual forms through an iterative process that resembled the process of natural selection, so artists could control the creative exploration. 3.2. Machine Learning and Neural Networks in Art Generation Machine learning has been a revolutionary aspect in the development of artistic production engineered by artificial intelligence. Machine learning models allow computers to discover patterns with data as opposed to traditional algorithmic systems that use a well-defined set of programming rules. When applied to the art generation, machine learning systems are trained on massive datasets of images, paintings, illustrations, and other visual works of art. In this process of training, the models acquire statistical relations of shapes, colours, textures, and compositional structures to characterize artistic styles. Neural networks, especially deep learning models, have played a major role in facilitating this ability. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are extensively involved in visual analysis of features and hierarchical patterns in the images. The visual processing in these networks is done in multiple layers which successively capture simple objects like edges and colors till they capture more complicated objects like objects, textures and artistic structures. This hierarchical model enables neural networks to learn and generalize stylistic attributes of artistic images in artistic data. A major advancement in the neural-network-based generation of art was the idea of neural style transfer, which proved that a machine learning model had the ability to decouple the content of an image and its artistic style. Figure 1 depicts neural networks that are trained to produce art images using artistic patterns. The system had the potential to use the style of renowned artists on completely different pictures by recombining these elements. Figure 1 |
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Table 2 Evaluation of Creative Contribution in AI-Generated Art Systems |
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|
Creative Component |
Human Contribution (%) |
AI System Contribution (%) |
Hybrid Contribution (%) |
Perceived Authorship Score
(%) |
|
Concept Development |
78.5 |
12.3 |
9.2 |
84 |
|
Dataset Preparation |
64.7 |
21.5 |
13.8 |
76 |
|
Style Adaptation |
41.3 |
46.8 |
11.9 |
78 |
|
Final Artwork Selection |
72.9 |
15.4 |
11.7 |
86 |
Table 2 is an assessment of the creative contribution in the AI-generated art systems by contrasting the positions of the human creators, the artificial intelligence systems, and the hybrid interactions. The findings indicated that concept development is still mostly human in nature as it contributed 78.5, which means that most of the concept development is still done by human imagination and conceptual thinking to initiate artistic ideas. Figure 3 indicates human, AI, and hybrid creative contributions allocation.
Figure 3

Figure 3 Comparative Distribution of Human, AI, and Hybrid
Contributions Across Creative Components
Conversely, AI system plays an important part in the process of style adaptation as the contribution of AI in this process is 46.8, which indicates the power of machine learning models in interpreting patterns and reproducing art styles. Figure 4 demonstrates the trends in authorship perception in the various stages of human-AI creative workflows. The preparation of data phase indicates the equal distribution of the responsibilities, whereas human participation (64.7) is also critical to control and structure the training information, and AI helps to process data automatically. Babu et al. (2025)
Figure 4

Figure 4 Perceived Authorship Score and Human–AI Contribution
Trends in Creative Workflow Stages
Also, the process of selecting final artwork demonstrates a significant level of human influence (72.9) and the highest value of perceived authorship (86) which implies that human judgment plays a crucial role in the selection of final artistic product. On the whole, the results show that AI is used as mostly a creative assistant, but the human remains the dominant participant of the artistic choice and authorship.
Table 3
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Table 3 Performance and Perception Analysis of AI-Generated Art Platforms |
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AI Art System Type |
Visual Quality Score (%) |
Creativity Index (%) |
Human Control Level (%) |
Output Diversity Score (%) |
|
GAN-Based Art Generator |
86.7 |
81.5 |
62.4 |
78.9 |
|
Diffusion Model Generator |
92.8 |
88.6 |
69.7 |
84.3 |
|
Prompt-Based AI Art Systems |
89.4 |
85.7 |
78.1 |
82.5 |
Table 3 is a comparative analysis of various AI-generated art platforms in terms of visual quality, creativity, human control, and the diversity of outputs. The findings demonstrate that diffusion model generators have the best performance on visual quality (92.8%), creativity index (88.6%) and thus they are capable of creating highly detailed and aesthetically advanced works of art. Figure 5 demonstrates a visual quality and creativity analysis between AI art systems. These models also show a significant level of output diversification (84.3%), implying that they could be used in producing a large series of artistic variations. The importance of having human input in the artistic generation process through textual prompts makes the system of AI art that is prompt-based have the highest level of human control (78.1%).
Figure 5

Figure 5 Comparative Analysis of Visual Quality and
Creativity Across AI Art System Types
This implies that through these systems, artists have a greater means of directing style, composition, and content. Suri et al. (2025) In the meantime, GAN-based generators are highly successful in visual generation (86.7) although they have a slightly lower diversity than diffusion models. In general, the findings show that diffusion models are the most developed generative systems, whereas prompt-based systems focus on human-AI collaborative creativity. Garg et al. (2025)
8. Conclusion
The rapid progress of artificial intelligence has already changed the environment of the art production greatly, as there are new ways of creating visual and multimedia art pieces. With the creation of machine learning models, neural networks, Generative Adversarial Networks, and diffusion-based systems, AI has now been able to generate intricate artistic pieces that are very similar to those created by humans. Such technological innovations have widened the possibilities of digital creativity and at the same time highlight the traditional definitions of the authorship and originality in art. This paper has explored the technological processes of the development of the AI-generated art, such as training the dataset, algorithmic learning, and the interaction between a human and the generative system on the prompt. The discussion shows that big data and computer-generated pattern recognition are essential in the AI systems, which are used to generate artificial artworks on a massive scale. Despite the fact that the generation process is automated, human intervention is still at the core of crafting creative results by timely design, parameter adjustment and aesthetic consideration. The authorship discussion shows that the AI-generated art cannot be easily placed in the traditional approaches to the creation ownership. Therefore, the authorship in AI-generated art may be considered as the distributed or collaborative creativity which is a product of the engagement between human will and computation.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
None.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
None.
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