I find this question interesting because it raises the question of which component of art is the one that makes it "art"?
Lets take a painting, for example. Is it OK if the painter did not stretch their own canvas? Or if they stretched it, but bought the wood pieces pre-cut? If they cut their own pieces, can they do it from store-bought wood? Or do they need to collect it in a forest? Can they buy canvas, or do they have to weave it? Can they weave it out of pre-spun fiber, or do they need to spin it themselves? Is it OK if they didn't card the cotton themselves? What if someone else picked the cotton? What if someone else planted the seeds? And we haven't even gotten into whether they made their own pigments or just bought them in a store. Do they need to make their own brushes??
That whole paragraph is absurd, right? But there really is a point there. Tools exist to ease the creation of art. AI is a tool. And an imperfect one, as the article points out in various ways.
So it really is worth asking... is there anything wrong with using new tools to create art?
If specific competitions want to set their own rules to answer that question, that is certainly reasonable and acceptable. But a global assumption that AI-created art isn't art... that is an assumption that should be at least questioned.
