Evaluation of ethical response to the use of artificial intelligence in aesthetics

Abstract

Public debate over generative AI has increasingly centered on the morality of AI-produced art, often framed as an issue of theft, deception, or the displacement of human creativity. This paper argues that such critiques frequently are overly broad or are based on misconceptions about how Gen-AI works. Using a pragmatic aesthetics framework, I argue that artistic expression should be understood as a form of human experience involving doing and undergoing, and that when humans employ AI systems as instruments within this experiential process, authorship and creativity remain fundamentally human. The paper also clarifies how objections grounded in copyright differ from those concerning artistic integrity or democratic access to technology. Rather than condemning AI art wholesale, a pragmatic framework invites inquiry into how generative technologies can enrich or impoverish the quality of experience and participation in art. This pragmatic orientation reframes the ethics of AI art from the search for fixed rules toward a contextual evaluation of consequences, emphasizing how creative tools, such as cameras or algorithms, reshape the possibilities of aesthetic expression and moral judgment.