Who Made the Painting? Artificial Intelligence Art Through the Eyes of the Public and the Expert

 

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

 

A review of the study by Li Gu and Yong Li (2022): Who made the paintings: Artists or artificial intelligence? The effects of identity on liking and purchase intention

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Introduction: when the machine signs the work

Does our aesthetic judgment change if we know that a painting has been generated by an algorithm rather than by a human being? Do we feel the same pleasure before a traditional Chinese landscape if we discover that behind it there is not a human brush, but a neural network trained on thousands of examples? And what happens when the judge is an art expert —someone who has spent years developing their sensitivity and knowledge?

These questions, which only a decade ago might have seemed speculative, have become the subject of rigorous empirical research. A study published in 2022 by Li Gu and Yong Li in the journal Frontiers in Psychology addresses precisely this question . The researchers analysed how the identity of the author —human or artificial intelligence— affects aesthetic appreciation, purchase intention, and collection intention for paintings, in both traditional Chinese and Western styles.

The results are revealing and, in a certain sense, counterintuitive. For the general public without specialised artistic training, the author's identity does not modify their appreciation: they like the work or not, regardless of whether it was made by a person or a machine. However, for art experts, things change radically: they evaluate AI-generated paintings less favourably compared to those made by human artists.

This finding, as we shall see, has profound implications for our understanding of art, creativity, and the role of technology in aesthetic experience. From the perspective of our research on the S/Y/C model and Surgical Philosophy, the study by Gu and Li offers valuable empirical evidence on how the distinction between art as product and art as embodied process operates in practice.

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The study: how was the research designed?

Gu and Li conducted two complementary experiments to explore the effect of author identity on the reception of AI-generated art .

Study 1: the general public

In the first study, participants had no professional art experience. They were shown two types of paintings: traditional Chinese style and Western style. In addition, information about the author was manipulated: in some cases it was said that the work had been created by a human artist; in others, by an artificial intelligence system. Participants had to rate their liking of the work, as well as their intention to purchase or collect it.

The results were clear. First, author identity did not significantly affect ratings. Participants liked a painting or not based on its perceived aesthetic qualities, not on whether it came from a machine or a person. Second, an ingroup preference bias was observed: participants showed a preference for traditional Chinese-style paintings over Western ones, a finding consistent with previous research on cultural preferences in empirical aesthetics .

This finding suggests that, for the non-specialist public, artificial intelligence is not perceived as a threat or an imposter. Its works are judged by the same criteria as human ones. The "aura" of the human artist, at least for this segment of the population, does not seem to confer automatic added value.

Study 2: art experts

The second study introduced a crucial variable: level of artistic expertise. Both non-specialists and experts (artists, critics, art historians, curators) participated. The results were drastically different.

Art experts evaluated AI-generated paintings less favourably compared to those made by human artists . Non-experts, as in the first study, showed no preference. In addition, significant interactions were found: the effect of author identity depended on the level of expertise, and also interacted with the style of the painting.

In other words, for those who know about art, who is behind the work matters. The machine, however sophisticated its algorithms, does not produce the same effect as the human hand. The knowledge and aesthetic sensitivity acquired through years of training and practice generate a discrimination that the general public does not make.

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Why do experts see what the public does not see?

What explains this difference between experts and non-experts? Gu and Li suggest several hypotheses.

First, experts have internalised a narrative of art that places the artist as the creative subject at its centre. The history of art, at least since Romanticism, has exalted the figure of the individual genius, of expressive subjectivity, of the trembling hand, of the gaze that sees what others do not see. Artificial intelligence, by its very nature, lacks that biography, that interiority, that struggle with material. For the expert, the work is not only an object: it is the testimony of an encounter between a subject and the world.

Second, experts possess tacit knowledge about creative processes. They know what it costs to achieve an effect, what it implies to master a technique, what it means to find one's own voice. AI generation, however impressive, does not require that effort, that dedication, that training. It is, from this perspective, a shortcut: it produces brilliant results, but without the journey that gives them meaning.

Third, experts are more sensitive to signals of intentionality. They detect in the work the traces of the artist's decisions —the brushstroke, the choice of colour, the composition— and those traces speak to them of a mind behind them. In the AI-generated work, those traces do not refer to a subjectivity, but to an algorithm. And that, for the expert, impoverishes the experience.

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Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

This experimental study connects directly with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence.

The difference between the response of the general public and that of experts can be interpreted in light of our three dimensions. The general public, lacking training that refines their perception of the Y and C dimensions, tends to value the work mainly for its superficial impact on the S dimension (pleasure, activation, novelty). If the AI-generated work is visually attractive, it fulfils that function, regardless of its origin.

Experts, on the other hand, have developed a sensitivity that allows them to discriminate between product and process. They do not only see the form: they intuit the work, the intention, the history behind it. Their appreciation integrates the three dimensions more fully:

• S (Survival): The work must be aesthetically pleasing, but not only that. It must also connect with the deepest needs for meaning and transcendence.

• Y (Symbolon): The work is a symbol, and the symbol only acquires its full meaning when it refers to a subjectivity that inhabited it. AI can manipulate symbols, but cannot inhabit them. The expert detects that absence.

• C (Wholeness): The work must offer a sense of achieved totality, of internal coherence. But this wholeness is more satisfying when it is perceived as the result of a human search, not of a probabilistic calculation.

Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut of these results. It is not about concluding that AI art is "bad" or that experts are elitists. It is about recognising that aesthetic experience is not univocal: there are different layers of appreciation, and each layer mobilises different dimensions of the nervous system. The general public stays on the surface; experts penetrate more deeply. Both are right at their level, but the expert's level is richer, more integrated, closer to what art, in its origin and in its function, has been for the human species.

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Implications for the future of art and AI

The study by Gu and Li has important practical implications, both for creators of AI art and for professionals in the art world.

For AI system developers, the results suggest that, if their goal is for generated works to be appreciated by the general public, the current strategy —focusing on visual quality and stylistic variety— is sufficient. The public does not discriminate by origin.

However, if the goal is to reach the serious art market —collectors, museums, critics— things become more complicated. Experts do discriminate, and they do so negatively. To change this perception, improving algorithms will not be enough. It will be necessary, perhaps, to develop new narratives about what it means to "create" with AI, new ways of understanding authorship and intentionality in the context of autonomous systems.

For human artists, the results offer some consolation. Their expertise, their training, their ability to infuse intentionality into the work is still valued by those who truly understand art. AI has not replaced them in the heart of the art world, although it may be transforming its boundaries.

For art educators and critics, the study poses a challenge: how to train new generations of viewers to develop a sensitivity that goes beyond mere superficial appreciation? How to teach them to see not only the form, but the process, the intention, the history?

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Final considerations: art as encounter, not only as object

The study by Gu and Li reminds us that art is not only a matter of beautiful objects, but of encounters between subjectivities. The general public can enjoy an AI-generated work without asking about its origin. But the expert, precisely because they have dedicated their life to understanding art, cannot ignore that question. And when they ask it, they discover that, in the machine-made work, something is missing.

That something is, perhaps, what defines human art in its origin and in its essence: the expression of an embodied, finite, mortal subjectivity that uses form to communicate the ineffable, to share the unsharable, to transcend the solitude of the flesh. Artificial intelligence can imitate forms, but it cannot generate that source. Because that source is life itself: a body that feels, a symbol that is inhabited, a wholeness that is yearned for.

Experts, by discriminating between human art and machine art, remind us of something that technological enthusiasm tends to forget: that art is not only a product, but a process; not only an object, but a testimony; not only a form, but an encounter. And that encounter, for now, remains the exclusive patrimony of the living.

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References

Gu, L., & Li, Y. (2022). Who made the paintings: Artists or artificial intelligence? The effects of identity on liking and purchase intention. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 999163. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.999163

 Gu, Li & Li, Yong (2022). Who made the paintings: Artists or artificial intelligence? The effects of identity on liking and purchase intention. Frontiers in Psychology 13.
https://philpapers.org/rec/GUWMT

Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1

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Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

 

 

 

AI Art: A New Harmonisation or a Silent Rupture?

 

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

A review of Tao Feng's article (2022): A New Harmonisation of Art and Technology: Philosophic Interpretations of Artificial Intelligence Art

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Introduction: when the machine becomes an artistic "agent"

Is art generated by artificial intelligence a legitimate form of aesthetic creation or, on the contrary, a rupture with the millenary tradition that has defined the human? This question, which only a decade ago might have seemed speculative, has become a central debate in contemporary philosophy of art. Generative algorithms produce works that win painting competitions, are auctioned at renowned houses, and are exhibited in modern art museums. The public, meanwhile, oscillates between fascination and perplexity.

The Chinese philosopher Tao Feng, in an article published in 2022 in the journal Critical Arts, addresses this question with an original and nuanced approach . His central thesis is that AI art cannot be reduced either to a simple extension of human art or to a mere technological curiosity. Rather, it is a special form situated "between natural beauty and human art" , occupying an unprecedented territory that demands new interpretative categories.

Feng proposes a "new harmonisation" between art and technology —a balance that neither ignores the fundamental differences (AI lacks intentionality and consciousness) nor dismisses the creative possibilities it opens. From the perspective of our research on the S/Y/C model and Surgical Philosophy, Feng's work offers valuable conceptual tools for understanding what is at stake when a machine "creates" art.

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Two methods, three levels: the architecture of AI art

Feng distinguishes, first of all, two major technical approaches in the generation of art by artificial intelligence: symbolism and connectionism .

Symbolism is based on the explicit manipulation of rules and symbolic representations. This is the classical tradition of AI, the one that attempts to codify human knowledge into formal systems. In the artistic domain, it translates into algorithms that follow predefined aesthetic rules —harmonic compositions, chromatic schemes, metric structures— to generate works.

Connectionism, on the other hand, uses artificial neural networks that learn patterns from large datasets. They are not programmed with explicit rules; they are shown thousands or millions of examples, and they themselves extract statistical regularities. This approach, which has given rise to models such as DALL-E or Midjourney, produces surprisingly creative results because it does not limit itself to applying fixed rules but can generate unprecedented combinations of styles and forms.

But beyond technique, Feng proposes an analysis at three levels of the human-machine system:

1. Human using machine: AI is a tool at the service of the human artist, like the brush or the camera. Control and intentionality reside entirely in the human.

2. Human guiding machine: there is a closer collaboration. The human defines parameters, selects training data, guides the process, but the machine generates results that the human has not foreseen in detail. It is a dialogue, not a one-way instruction.

3. Human-machine separation: AI operates autonomously, without direct human intervention. It generates works by itself, based on its own learned criteria. This is the most controversial level, because it raises the question of whether we can still speak of "art" without a human artist behind it.

This triple distinction is useful because it allows us to avoid excessive generalisations. It is not the same to say that an artist uses an AI filter in Photoshop as it is to claim that an autonomous algorithm produces paintings without supervision. The philosophical problems raised by each level are different.

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AI art as an intermediate form: between nature and artifice

One of the most original aspects of Feng's analysis is his characterisation of AI art as a special form that does not fit neatly into traditional aesthetic categories .

On the one hand, AI art is not a natural aesthetic object. It is not a sunset or a rock formation sculpted by erosion. It is an artefact, a product of technique. This implies that its appreciation is mixed with interests —technological, commercial, cultural— and does not respond to the pure disinterested contemplation that Kant attributed to aesthetic judgment.

On the other hand, AI art is not equivalent to traditional human art. Feng states it clearly: AI has neither intentionality nor consciousness . There is no subject behind the work who wanted to say something, who poured their emotion into it, who seeks to communicate with the viewer. The AI-generated work is, in this sense, orphaned: it has no interiority to express.

However —and here lies the originality of the thesis— AI art is not a mere empty imitation either. Feng proposes that its artistic generation is a kind of "purposiveness without purpose" , a reformulation of the Kantian concept. The work seems to have purpose, seems to have been made for something, but that purpose does not reside in the mind of a conscious creator, but rather in the structure of the algorithm and in the statistical patterns it has learned.

This ambiguity —neither nature nor human art; neither chance nor full intentionality— places AI art in a conceptually unprecedented territory, demanding new philosophical tools to be understood.

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The "actor network": rethinking authorship in the age of AI

Feng introduces a particularly fruitful concept to overcome the authorship dilemma: the "actor network" . Inspired by Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, this concept proposes that artistic creation is not the work of a single subject —the romantic genius, the individual artist— but the result of the interaction of multiple actors: humans, technologies, institutions, algorithms.

In this framework, artificial intelligence can be considered as an "agent" in the generation of art —not as a fully conscious subject, but also not as a passive  tool. It participates in the construction of artistic logic, breaks traditional boundaries, and opens up possibilities that no human would have imagined alone.

The notion of "actor network" allows us, according to Feng, to avoid two equally impoverishing extremes: on the one hand, the radical anthropocentrism that refuses to recognise any novelty in AI art; on the other, the naive technocentrism that attributes to machines a creativity comparable to the human.

Art, from this perspective, is always a collective construction. And artificial intelligence is a new participant in this construction —not to replace the human artist, but to become part of a more complex creative ecology. 

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The problem of truth and falsehood in AI art

A fascinating aspect that Feng addresses is the question of authenticity . In AI art, the processes of generation, identification, and appreciation necessarily include a judgment about the true and the false. Is what the machine has made really art? Or is it a simulation, an imposture, a forgery?

This question is not merely academic. It has practical implications in the world of the art market, copyright, conservation, and criticism. Feng notes that AI art reflects a forced integration of intelligent technology into the artistic domain, an attempt to eliminate contingency, dialectics, and negativity which, for certain aesthetic traditions, are consubstantial with true art .

Human art, Feng reminds us, has traditionally been linked to risk, to uncertainty, to struggle with material, to the possibility of failure. AI, on the contrary, always produces within the margins of what it has learned, without true capacity for transgression. Its "creativity" is, at bottom, a statistical variation within a pre-defined space of possibilities.

What we need, Feng concludes, is not a substitution of human art by machine art, but a true harmonisation between art and technology . People should use aesthetic reason to guide AI technology, not passively submit to its logic nor idealise it uncritically.

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Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

Tao Feng's analysis resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence. His three levels of the human-machine system and his concept of the "actor network" can be reinterpreted in the light of our categories.

The S (Survival) dimension reminds us that human art is not a luxury but a tool for homeostatic regulation. AI, lacking a body and vital needs, cannot generate art in this full sense. It can produce formal objects, but it does not respond to the survival drive that, in humans, impels creation.

The Y (Symbolon) dimension is central to understanding the difference between the inhabited symbol and the manipulated symbol. AI can manipulate symbols efficiently, but it does not inhabit the symbol. There is no one inside who recognises or is recognised. AI art is, in this sense, an empty symbolon: it has the form, but not the lived experience.

The C (Wholeness) dimension points to the human need to close forms, to integrate parts into a coherent whole. AI can generate formally closed objects, but it does not experience the drive toward wholeness. There is no subject who feels relief when the pattern closes, nor anguish when it fragments, nor longing when a totality is intuited but not yet reached.

Surgical Philosophy, for its part, invites us to make a precise analytical cut in this debate. It is not about rejecting AI or accepting it without more. It is about distinguishing levels, excising categorial confusions —such as confusing product with process, or simulation with lived experience— and suturing a conceptual framework that integrates the new without losing sight of the essential: that art, in its origin and in its function, is a phenomenon of the living.

Feng offers, with his concept of the "actor network", a middle path that respects this complexity. AI can be one more actor in the creative ecology, without occupying the place of the human artist, but also without being reduced to a mere tool. It is an agent, yes, but of a special kind: devoid of intentionality, of consciousness, of a body. An agent that amplifies, that surprises, that proposes, but that does not feel.

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Final considerations: toward a new harmonisation

Tao Feng's article reminds us that art is not an immutable essence, but a living practice that is transformed by technology. Artificial intelligence is not the first innovation to challenge our aesthetic categories —photography, cinema, conceptual art have already done so— but it may be the most radical, because it questions the very role of the creative subject.

Feng does not offer definitive answers, and that is a virtue. Instead, he proposes an attitude: that of harmonisation, not submission or rejection. To use aesthetic reason —that human capacity to judge beauty with sensitivity and reflection— to guide technology, not to be guided by it.

From our perspective, this implies remembering that art, in its Palaeolithic origin, was a biological technology in the service of survival, symbol, and wholeness. Artificial intelligence may be a new technology in this long journey, but it must not make us forget that art is, above all, an encounter between embodied subjectivities. An encounter that, for now, only living beings can protagonise.

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References

Feng, T. (2022). A new harmonisation of art and technology: Philosophic interpretations of artificial intelligence art. Critical Arts, 36(1-2), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2022.2111454

López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

 https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus 

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1

 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

 

The Robot That Paints, But Is Not an Artist: What People Think About Artificial Intelligence and Art

 

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

A review of the study by Mikalonytė and Kneer (2022): Can Artificial Intelligence Make Art?

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Introduction: Can a machine be an artist?

In recent years, artificial intelligence systems have amazed the world with their capacity to generate images, music, and texts that, in many cases, are indistinguishable from human creations. Algorithms such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion produce visual works of a quality that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. Robots like Ai-Da exhibit in contemporary art galleries. And the public, in general, contemplates these phenomena with a mixture of fascination and perplexity.

But one fundamental question persists, and it is not purely technical: can what a machine generates be considered art? Can a robot be called an artist?

These questions, which seem taken from a Philip K. Dick novel, have entered fully into the domain of empirical research. A study published in 2022 by Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė and Markus Kneer, in the journal ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interactions, addresses precisely this question using tools from experimental psychology and experimental philosophy (or "x-phi") .

The results, as we shall see, are surprising and revealing: people are willing to accept that paintings generated by robots can be art, but they are very reluctant to grant those same robots the status of artists. This dissociation, we will argue, is not mere prejudice, but a deep clue about what we understand by creativity, intentionality, and, ultimately, the very origin of art.

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The study: what do we really think about paintings made by robots?

Mikalonytė and Kneer designed two experiments with a total of 693 participants to explore public perception of AI-generated art . They manipulated three fundamental factors:

1. Agent type: an AI-driven robot versus a human agent.

2. Behavior type: intentional creation of a painting versus accidental creation.

3. Object type: abstract painting versus representational (figurative) painting.

Participants had to evaluate, on the one hand, whether the produced painting was considered art and, on the other, whether the agent (robot or human) deserved to be considered an artist.

The results were clear and consistent. First, people judged robot-made paintings and human-made paintings to be art to roughly the same extent. That is, the public does not automatically reject a work simply because it was generated by a machine. If the visual result is similar, the label "art" is applied generously.

However —and this is the central finding— people are much less willing to consider robots as artists. Although they accept that the work can be art, they resist attributing to the robot the status of artist. This dissociation is not trivial: it reveals that, for the public, being an artist implies something more than producing aesthetically valuable objects.

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Why can't a robot be an artist? The question of intentionality

The study by Mikalonytė and Kneer offers a crucial clue to explain this resistance: people are less willing to attribute artistic intentions to robots . In other words, although a robot can generate an image that we consider beautiful or interesting, we do not believe that behind that image there is a purpose, a will to express, a desire to communicate something.

This is a fundamental difference. The philosophical tradition of art, at least since Romanticism, has placed emphasis on the intentionality of the creator. The artist is not merely a craftsman who produces objects, but a subject who expresses their interiority, who communicates their emotions, who seeks to provoke a response in the viewer.

When we contemplate a human painting, even an abstract one, we tend to ask: what did the artist mean? What were they feeling? What were they trying to communicate? These questions presuppose a mind, a subjectivity, a personal history. In the case of a robot, however sophisticated its algorithm, there is no one "inside" who can want, feel, or communicate in that full sense.

The experiment confirms this intuition: the attribution of artistic intentionality is a key predictor of the willingness to grant artist status. And that attribution simply does not occur in the case of robots, at least not to the same extent as in the case of humans.

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Artifact versus author: the paradox of AI-generated art

The study by Mikalonytė and Kneer highlights an interesting paradox. On the one hand, contemporary culture has enormously expanded the concept of art: Duchamp's readymade, conceptual art, installations, performance... All of this has shifted attention from the object to the idea, from the product to the process. One might think that, in this context, attributing artistic status to an AI-generated work should not be problematic.

However, the public continues to establish a clear distinction between the work and its author. The work can be art, but the robot is not an artist. What does this mean? Perhaps that, deep down, we continue to conceive art as an act of communication between subjectivities. The work is the vehicle, the artist is the source. If there is no conscious, intentional, embodied source, then the work, however beautiful, becomes an orphaned artifact, a message without a sender.

This popular intuition, far from being mere technophobic prejudice, has deep philosophical roots. Authors such as Walter Benjamin spoke of the "aura" of the original artwork, linked to its unique presence in time and space. Others, such as Richard Wollheim, insisted that the understanding of art requires attributing to the artist a mental state —an intention, an emotion, a belief— that is expressed in the work. Without that attribution, the aesthetic experience is impoverished or transformed into something else.

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Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

This experimental study connects directly with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence. 

The public's resistance to considering robots as artists stems fundamentally from the fact that people do not attribute artistic intentionality to them. And artistic intentionality, according to our model, is a manifestation of the Y (Symbolon) dimension, but also of S (Survival) and C (Wholeness). 

• S (Survival): Artistic intentionality is not an abstract luxury. It is rooted in the biological need to regulate our affective states. The artist creates because they feel, because they hurt, because they rejoice, because they need to process the world in order to survive in it. A robot does not have these needs because it has no body to preserve, no evolutionary history of fears and hopes, no personal biography of losses and loves.

• Y (Symbolon): Artistic intention is, above all, a symbolic intention. The artist does not merely produce forms: they produce symbolon, acts of recognition through shared codes. They want the viewer to see something, feel something, recognise something. The robot can manipulate symbols efficiently, but it does not inhabit the symbol. There is no one "inside" trying to recognise or be recognised.

• C (Wholeness): The artist seeks, through their work, to achieve a form of wholeness —to close a form, resolve a rhythm, integrate a dispersed experience into a coherent totality. This drive toward wholeness is a biological and existential need of the living organism. A robot does not experience it because it is not a being that unfolds in time toward an end, nor one that yearns to integrate itself into a whole greater than itself.

The study by Mikalonytė and Kneer empirically confirms what our Surgical Philosophy predicts: the public is not irrational in resisting calling a robot an "artist". They are simply detecting, perhaps implicitly, that full artistic creativity requires something that machines, for now, do not possess: a body that feels, an intention that expresses itself, a subjectivity that unfolds in time.

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Implications for the future of art and AI

Does this mean that artificial intelligence has nothing to contribute to the world of art? Not at all. The study shows that the public is willing to consider AI-generated works as art. And that is an important recognition: algorithms can produce objects with genuine aesthetic value that challenge us, move us, make us think.

However, the reluctance to call robots "artists" is not an obstacle to be eliminated, but a distinction to be preserved. It reminds us that art is not just a matter of products, but of embodied processes. Art is the testimony that there is someone —a flesh-and-blood being, with a history, with a body that feels— who wanted to say something. That "someone" is irreplaceable.

Artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for human artists. It can amplify their creativity, offer them unexpected variations, free them from tedious tasks. But the place of the artist —as the source of intentionality, as an embodied subject, as a moral and affective agent— will foreseeably remain human. Because art, in its essence, is the encounter between two subjectivities: that of the creator and that of the viewer. And that encounter, for now, can only occur between beings who feel.

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Final considerations: art as an encounter of subjectivities

The study by Mikalonytė and Kneer offers us a valuable lesson for research on the origin of art. Human art was not born as a mere production of beautiful objects. It was born as a form of affective communication, as a bridge between minds trapped in the solitude of their skulls. Art is, above all, an act of expression and a call for response.

That is why, although a machine can produce objects formally analogous to human ones, it cannot occupy the place of the artist. Because the artist is not only a producer of forms: they are a being who says something, who seeks to be heard, who shares their inner world. And that, perhaps, is the most human thing there is.

Artificial intelligence can imitate the product. But the process —the trembling of the hand, the doubt before the canvas, the joy of a successful stroke, the hope that someone, someday, will understand what you meant— remains, for now, the exclusive patrimony of the living.

---

References

López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

  https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1

Mikalonytė, E. S., & Kneer, M. (2022). Can artificial intelligence make art? ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 11(4), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3510829

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

 

 

 

Robot or Artist? Artificial Intelligence Facing the Mirror of Human Creativity A commentary on Hengran Yang's article (2025): Artificial intelligence art robots

 

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

 

Introduction: a question that is not new, but urgently needs an answer

Can a machine be an artist? Does the future of art belong to robots programmed to generate beauty, or will creativity remain an exclusively human domain? These questions, which a decade ago sounded like science fiction, now occupy the front pages of philosophy journals, cultural studies, and increasingly, artificial intelligence laboratories.

Hengran Yang's 2025 article, Artificial intelligence art robots: the future of technological art or the end of the human artist?, published in the International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, addresses precisely this debate. Yang offers a historical overview of AI-generated art, analyses its philosophical and ethical implications, and concludes that, although these technologies can produce formally complex works, they lack human emotional expression and cultural sensitivity. He thus proposes a complementary role for AI in the artistic ecosystem, not a substitutive one.

From the perspective of my research —which integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology within the framework of Surgical Philosophy and the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C— Yang's work is valuable as a starting point. But it also reveals a fundamental limitation: his analysis operates at the level of traditional philosophy of art and cultural studies, without addressing the neurobiological and evolutionary basis of aesthetic experience. That is the gap our research attempts to fill.

 

What does Yang say?

Yang structures his work around several key sections. First, he reconstructs the historical evolution of AI art, from algorithmic experiments in the 1960s to contemporary developments such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and robot artists like Ai-Da, capable of drawing and painting using deep learning algorithms.

Next, he analyses the philosophical and ethical questions this phenomenon raises: who is the author of an AI-generated work? Can a machine be considered creative? What happens to the value of human artistic work when a machine can produce thousands of works in seconds?

Yang's conclusion is nuanced. He acknowledges the technical capabilities of AI —its ability to generate images, music, or texts with impressive formal complexity— but emphasises that these systems possess neither consciousness, nor intentionality, nor subjective experience. Therefore, AI cannot replace the human artist, but should be understood as a collaborative tool. Future artists, Yang suggests, will need to develop technical skills to work with AI, not to compete against it.

 

Surgical Philosophy: excising the confusion between product and process 

From the Surgical Philosophy I develop in my work, the first step in addressing a poorly posed problem is to make a precise analytical cut. In the debate on AI and art, the fundamental confusion consists of equating two radically different things: the formal product (an image, a symphony, a poem) and the embodied process that, in human beings, gives rise to that product.

An AI can generate an image that, viewed externally, is indistinguishable from a human painting. But what it lacks is:

• A body that feels: AI has no autonomic nervous system; it does not experience a racing heart in the presence of beauty, nor shivers before tragedy, nor stillness before the sublime.

• An evolutionary history: AI does not descend from primates who, over millions of years, learned to detect patterns, avoid predators, and collaborate in groups.

• A personal biography: AI has not suffered loss, has not loved, has not feared death. In short, it has no self that unfolds over time.

The error that Surgical Philosophy helps to excise is believing that, because the product is similar, the process is equivalent. It is not. And that difference is what matters for understanding art as a human phenomenon.

 

S/ Y/ C: why AI cannot (yet) be an artist

My Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C holds that neuronal functioning is based on a single function subdivided into three concatenated subfunctions that operate as a single unit: S (Survival), Y (Symbolon), and C (Wholeness). These three constitute the substrate of all human experience, including artistic experience. Let us examine each one in the human being and ask whether artificial intelligence can even approximate its unfolding.

The S dimension, survival. In human beings, aesthetic emotion does not float in an abstract void: it is rooted in biological mechanisms for detecting favourable environments, resources, and safety signals. Art mobilises the autonomic nervous system —it quickens the heart, bristles the skin, holds the breath. It is not a superimposed cultural ornament; it is a deep activation of the living body that must preserve itself. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, has no body to preserve. It experiences no fear, pleasure, wonder, or nostalgia. Its "response" to a stimulus —if it can be called that— is not an experience but a mathematical function that lacks the embodied texture of feeling.

The Y dimension, symbolon. Human beings create and share symbols from a shared cultural history. Art is, in its essence, symbolon: an act of recognition through common codes, a bridge connecting one interior to another through a shared form. Artificial intelligence can manipulate symbols with impressive efficiency: it processes language, generates recognisable images, composes texts that imitate discursive coherence. But it does not inhabit the symbol. There is no one "inside" the machine who recognises or is recognised, who shares the tremor of a discovered meaning, who celebrates the encounter between a sign and its interpretation. AI handles the symbol from the outside; the human being lives it from within.

The C dimension, wholeness. The human brain seeks to close forms, reduce uncertainty, integrate parts into a coherent whole. Beauty is, to a large extent, the subjective experience of an achieved wholeness: a form that closes, a rhythm that resolves, a meaning that emerges as an organic totality. Artificial intelligence can generate formally "closed" objects —rhymed sonnets, symmetrical images, structured melodies— but it does not experience the drive toward wholeness. There is no subject who feels relief when the pattern closes, nor anguish when it fragments, nor longing when a totality is intuited but not yet reached. There is form, undoubtedly. But there is no experience of form.

The conclusion is clear: artificial intelligence can imitate the product of art —the formally finished work, the image, the text, the melody— but it cannot generate the living process that gives meaning to that product. It lacks the S substrate of a body that feels because its survival depends on it. It does not inhabit the Y dimension of the symbol as an act of shared recognition. It does not feel the C drive toward wholeness as a biological and existential need.

Human art is not just a matter of form. It is a matter of a body that feels, a symbol that is inhabited, and a wholeness that is yearned for. And that, for now, remains the exclusive patrimony of the living.

 

And if AI developed consciousness? A note on the future

A recurring argument among proponents of "AI art" is that machines might develop consciousness in the future. If that happened —if an AI had sensations, emotions, a biography, and a sense of self— then the question would be completely reformulated.

But that is not the current state of technology, nor even a near horizon. Today, AI systems are statistical machines that process vast amounts of data and generate probabilistic outputs. There is no one home. There is no self contemplating the result of its own generation and finding it beautiful or empty. And without that self, there is no art in the fully human sense.

As Yang rightly notes, AI is a complementary tool. It can amplify human creativity, offer unexpected variations, accelerate technical processes. But it cannot replace the artist, because the artist is not just a generator of forms. The artist is an embodied, situated, mortal being who uses art to survive symbolically, to construct meaning, and to achieve, even if only for an instant, the sensation of wholeness.

 

Conclusion: art as testimony of the living

Hengran Yang's article has the merit of posing the right questions and offering a balanced analysis, far from both uncritical technological enthusiasm and conservative rejection. However, from the perspective of my research —which integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology within the framework of Surgical Philosophy and the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C— his analysis falls short in one crucial aspect: it does not address why human art matters biologically, not just culturally.

Art is not a luxury of the cerebral cortex. It is an expression of the single function of the nervous system: a function that needs to survive, symbolise, and achieve wholeness. AI can imitate form, but it cannot generate the living substrate from which that form emerges. That is why the future of art is not the replacement of the human by the machine, but collaboration between the two, provided we do not forget who brings the body, the history, and the meaning.

And that, perhaps, is the true philosophical challenge of our time: to distinguish the tool from the craftsman, the algorithm from embodiment, simulation from lived experience. Surgical Philosophy offers us the tools to make that cut with precision. Applying them is the task of those who still believe that art is, above all, an irreplaceable testimony of the living.

 

References

López Mallo, J. B. (2026). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C  

López Mallo, J. B. (2026). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1  

López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Tesis doctoral]. Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Repositorio ADDI. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701 

https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus  

Yang, H. (2025). Artificial intelligence art robots: the future of technological art or the end of the human artist? International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, *2*(1), 243–251. https://doi.org/10.70693/itphss.v2i1.85

 

 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens