AI-Generated Art and The Crisis of Authorship in Contemporary Aesthetics

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) image-generation tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion has precipitated an unprecedented crisis of authorship in the visual arts. This paper examines the philosophical, legal, and aesthetic dimensions of AI-generated art, interrogating whether algorithmic outputs qualify as creative works and who, if anyone, may claim authorship over them. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's concept of mechanical reproduction, Roland Barthes's declaration of the death of the author, and contemporary debates in computational creativity research, the article argues that AI art does not merely replicate existing aesthetic paradigms but fundamentally reconfigures the relationship between creator, tool, and audience. The analysis engages with landmark cases including the 2022 Colorado State Fair controversy, the U.S. Copyright Office's 2023 ruling on Zarya of the Dawn, and the ongoing litigation between visual artists and generative AI companies. The paper concludes that the emergence of AI art necessitates a revised theoretical framework that moves beyond the Romantic notion of the solitary genius and embraces a distributed model of creativity in which human intentionality, machine computation, and cultural context jointly constitute artistic meaning.