Human perception of art in the age of artificial intelligence

Recent advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rendered image-synthesis models capable of producing complex artworks that appear nearly indistinguishable from human-made works. Here we present a quantitative assessment of human perception and preference for art generated by OpenAI's DALL<middle dot>E 2, a leading AI tool for art creation. Participants were presented with pairs of artworks, one human-made and one AI-generated, in either a preference-choice task or an origin-discrimination task. Results revealed a significant preference for AI-generated artworks. At the same time, a separate group of participants were above-chance at detecting which artwork within the pair was generated by AI, indicating a perceptible distinction between human and artificial creative works. These results raise questions about how a shift in art preference to favour synthetic creations might impact the way we think about art and its value to human society, prompting reflections on authorship, authenticity, and human creativity in the era of generative AI.