Art Made by Artificial Intelligence: The Effect of Authorship on Aesthetic Judgments

Human-robot interaction requires that competent robot partners have a multiplicity of human characteristics. Can we accept that these competencies extend to the artistic domain, where humans have always expressed their uniqueness as a species? This study investigated whether aesthetic judgments evoked by abstract artworks vary depending on whether the author was believed to be a human or a robot. Adult participants were asked to give beauty (BJ) and liking (LJ) judgments, where BJ reflected artistic competence and LJ a more idiosyncratic, affective facet associated with the stimuli. Aesthetic judgments were made in a blind-baseline condition, devoid of authorship information, and a primed condition, where authorship information (human or robot) was provided. A significant variation was found in LJ and BJ between the blind and primed conditions. The human-authored paintings received a higher liking rating in the primed than the blind and robot conditions; opposite, the robot-authored paintings received a lower beauty rating in the primed than the blind condition. These results suggest a resistance to accepting artificial intelligence in the production of art and highlight the emotional component associated with human art-making. Furthermore, aesthetic judgments were correlated with the attribution of mental states to a human and a robot to evaluate what mental characteristics are most related to aesthetic judgments. Both BJ and LJ of robot-authored art were significantly associated with the mental ability of creativity, thus pinpointing this skill as a marker of human art-making.