At least since computer-generated digital art was also sold online with the NFT boom in 2020, the question has arisen as to whether artificial intelligences are - or will be - able to produce art.
What is art
In one sentence, art is a language.
Art serves communication - of meaning, of emotion, of aesthetics ...
Since communication is now a two-way process, the question arises:
Is it only art if the artist has consciously staged and intended the meaning?
Or is it sufficient for the concept of art if a work of art induces a meaning in the recipient of the art?
In the first case, art is quasi “verifiable”: you can check on the recipient side whether the intended meaning has actually arrived.
In the second case, art is recipient-intuitive: the artist plays with motifs in an agnostic way, combines and orchestrates them and these then awaken the recipient's association with a meaning - or not.
We will come back to this distinction. But let's take a look at:
What is AI
here, too, it is difficult to come up with an exact definition.
The fact that there is no convincing definition of intelligence also makes the definition of artificial intelligence questionable.
But we can approach the term:
Intelligence is something that we associate with the cognitive abilities of higher living beings - especially humans.
And these cognitive abilities seem to emerge automatically from sufficiently complex neuronal structures - the brains.
The development of AI can be described as an attempt to recreate digital structures in the form of software that resemble the biological structures in the brains of living things - in the hope that these structures then develop similar cognitive abilities.
Now the question is: how do we find out if or when this attempt was successful?
This, too, is only possible through communication:
But here, too, the question arises - very similar to the attempt to define art:
Is it necessary that a potential AI has cognitive abilities or is it sufficient that it can precisely simulate cognitive abilities - without any sense of semantics, meaning or significance.
Is a perfect intelligence simulator already an AI or is a form of self-confidence, an understanding of the inner and outer world and maybe also empathy necessary for an AI?
AI and art - two things the same question
In both cases - for AI as well as for art - the question is:
Is it necessary for art or intelligence to take place at the station? Or is it enough that art or intelligence is perceived by the recipient?
Can AI art?
From the above it follows:
If we start from the recipient-intuitive concept of art, intelligence is not necessary for the creation of art - neither biological nor artificial. It is enough for the recipient to associate a meaning - even if it was created out of cognitive emptiness.
If we assume a concept of art in which the artist consciously orchestrates his work according to an intended meaning, then an AI must also “understand” in the deepest sense in order to be an artist.
Where are we today
Artificial intelligence still lacks the cognitive depth to give art meaning.
However, artificial intelligence already has the technical complexity to create art that triggers something in the eye of the beholder.
So artificial intelligence can already create the recipient-intuitive art mentioned above.
English 
German