Others expressed similar experiences to me across various forms of art. Musician EJ Carey recalled the joy she felt watching Shrek when she was six years old, saying, “All we had was princesses and then Shrek came along and completely broke that mold.” She remembered specific details that fascinated her from the DVD extras, like the animators using a “grass” setting to get the right fur texture for Donkey. She was hooked by the art itself, but what made it stick with her was seeing how the creators brought the film to life. It had such a lasting impact that she and her husband even walked back up the aisle to the Smashmouth cover of “I’m a Believer” from the movie when they recently got married.

“I feel happy every time I think about it,” she said.

This thread of happiness that has woven through her life would’ve disappeared if she’d opened the DVD extras and saw that there were no creators. Without an artist, there is no long-lasting connection one can develop with a piece of art.

In another striking example, Claire Mulvaney, musician and founder of Open Mic, a social networking app for musicians, told me about a painting she’d come across at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

“I just remember being stunned by it. I just stood and stared for a long time,” she said.

Claire had been going through a relationship breakup she described as “shattering,” and was navigating conflicting feelings about this person. She said that the painting made her feel seen and validated.

The description of the painting, titled “Conflict,” begins with this: “Conflict pictures a quarrel, perhaps between lovers or adversaries who are simultaneously embracing and fighting.”

Claire’s photo of “Conflict” at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art

Claire’s story further illustrates that people don’t just connect with a piece of art, they connect with artists. Research has shown that people also have a more positive opinion on a piece of art when they connect with the emotions of the creator. In one study, artists were asked to create a piece and list the emotions they wanted to transmit to viewers. The findings showed that viewers who could correctly identify the emotions the artists intended to convey reported a higher appreciation of and sense of meaning in the work. We can see evidence of this in Claire’s example. She observed dozens of paintings during that visit to the museum, but the one that stuck with her was the one in which her emotions and the emotions of the artist aligned.

With AI-generated art, there is no human artist, and therefore this pipeline of emotional connection is disrupted. Once we have the knowledge that a piece of art is AI-generated, our biases, whether conscious or unconscious, dampen any strong emotional ties we may have towards it.

You may think to yourself — “But I do feel something when I interact with [insert piece of AI-generated art].” That’s certainly possible, but think about the art that has stuck with you over time, the art you reminisce on. I’ll bet you know something about the person who created it. We can infer from Alfred Gell’s theory that the piece of art you’re thinking of, the one that stayed with you, did so only because you connected with its creator. A piece of AI-generated art may make you feel something now, but it’s not going to help you manage a painful breakup or weave a thread of happiness through your life like the human-made pieces did with Claire and EJ. There are real benefits to art that you will miss out on without the presence of an artist.

There’s an obvious caveat that pops up here: What if we can’t tell the difference between human-made and AI-generated art? It’s true that as AI-technology evolves, it will become more difficult to distinguish between the two. It’s hard enough already – one study showed that people were only able to correctly identify AI-generated art 20% of the time. But I would argue that there is no world in which AI-generated art can live in the shadows. That’s because art is inherently social. When someone shares their art, they are attempting to connect with others. When people are affected by that art, a “sharing effect,” occurs, where people feel compelled to communicate their feelings with someone else. There is simply no room for AI to hide.

Those who use AI to create art clearly understand that people are biased against it, which is why they go out of their way to hide their use of it. The Devil Inside doesn’t mention any use of AI in their Spotify bio, and their website heavily downplays it, but attempting to hide the use of AI in the hope of finding success in the arts shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why the bias exists. The Devil Inside doesn’t take into account that it’s not their music alone that will bring them success; it’s the relationship they have with their listeners. This goes for any artist: if people enjoy your art, they are going to want to know more about you, the artist.

While the failure of AI-generated art may be inevitable in the long term, we also can’t just wait for it to fade away. There are real consequences to artists in the short term. As The Devil Inside enjoyed viral success, real musicians, the ones that create impactful work, were being financially squeezed out. Even now, with over 300,000 monthly listeners, they still pocket a massive chunk of the revenue pie. This extends past music — just a few days ago, I met somebody who creates tech to replace actors’ dialogue in film. This kind of technology will effectively eliminate post-production jobs in Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) and reduce working days for actors. If artists can’t work and afford to live, the volume of art that could improve our lives will decrease.

The solution to this is to insist on transparency. California has made a concerted effort to do just that with the recent passage SB 942, the “California AI Transparency Act.” The bill introduces measures to help users detect AI-generated content, but considering the minuscule financial penalties, it does not go nearly far enough to make a real difference. While several similar bills have been proposed in other states and in Congress, none have passed.

AI-generated art is not going away any time soon, but that doesn’t mean its presence has to encroach upon the space of real artists. If generative-AI companies truly believe in the validity of their art, they should stand behind it in full view. But I think they suspect what is obvious – if you allow AI-generated art to live alongside human-made art, you’ll see the true value of an artist in our society.