Comment | An open letter to Pope Leo XIV in defence of AI-generated art

Dear Pope Leo XIV,

I am writing to you as a fellow artist, sharing your concern for the urgent need to distinguish human art from what machines produce. As a French-Turkish visual artist, writer, and curator, I have been exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and contemporary art for years. I believe it is crucial to frame AI as a tool rather than an opposition to human creativity.

In your recent social media post, you emphasized the ontological difference between human art and machine-generated art, claiming that algorithms lack the spark of humanity. However, history tells us that humans have used tools for art creation for millennia. The distinction between human and AI-generated art should be viewed as a long line of inventions, starting with the brush. We, as artists, embrace these contemporary tools to understand and expose the biases, shortcomings, and limitations of AI.

Refusing to acknowledge AI-generated art as worthy of recognition is a false dichotomy that does not account for the many artists who thoughtfully and intentionally use AI to create art. Artists have always been known to utilize various tools and techniques to challenge norms and provoke thought. Examples like Richard Mosse's infrared photography series and Jon Rafman's use of Google Street View imagery demonstrate that AI-generated art can have profound social, historical, moral, political, and conceptual capacities and limitations.

Your perspective may inadvertently create a double standard, limiting the recognition of artists who use AI as a tool in their creative process. The Church's position, if taken as anti-AI, risks overlooking the human-derived labour, intentionality, and craft present in AI-generated art. By embracing AI as another artistic medium, we can appreciate the full spectrum of human creativity and bolster the ongoing dialogue between art and technology.