On the Social-Relational Moral Standing of AI: An Empirical Study Using AI-Generated Art

Abstract

The moral standing of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems has become a widely debated topic by normative research. This discussion, however, has primarily focused on those systems developed for social functions, e.g., social robots. Given the increasing interdependence of society with nonsocial machines, examining how existing normative claims could be extended to specific disrupted sectors, such as the art industry, has become imperative. Inspired by the proposals to ground machines’ moral status on social relations advanced by Gunkel and Coeckelbergh, this research presents online experiments (∑N = 448) that test whether and how interacting with AI-generated art affects the perceived moral standing of its creator, i.e., the AI-generative system. Our results indicate that assessing an AI system’s lack of mind could influence how people subsequently evaluate AI-generated art. We also find that the overvaluation of AI-generated images could negatively affect their creator’s perceived agency. Our experiments, however, did not suggest that interacting with AI-generated art has any significant effect on the perceived moral standing of the machine. These findings reveal that social-relational approaches to AI rights could be intertwined with property-based theses of moral standing. We shed light on how empirical studies can contribute to the AI and robot rights debate by revealing the public perception of this issue.

Artists or art thieves? media use, media messages, and public opinion about artificial intelligence image generators

“…Finally, the present study captured only two types of responses: support for AI art and negative beliefs about AI image generators taking jobs from artists and stealing their art styles. Future research could examine whether patterns in media use and exposure to specific media messages also predict other responses, including anthropomorphization of AI image generators, evaluations of AI artworks, and attributions of responsibility for AI art (see, e.g., Epstein et al 2020;Funk et al 2023;Hong and Curran 2019;Lima et al 2021;Mikalonytė and Kneer 2022).…”

“…Prior to the explosion of broad popular interest in these technologies, one experimental study found that varying the valence (positive or negative) and agency language (agent or tool) in information about AI image generators influenced the extent to which participants anthropomorphized such generators as well as the degree of credit for AI art they attributed to different actors (Epstein et al 2020). Studies have also explored how participants evaluate AI art and AI image generators after viewing the former or interacting with the latter (Gu and Li 2022;Hong and Curran 2019;Lima et al 2021;Mikalonytė and Kneer 2022). Looking at US public opinion more broadly, a national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in December 2022 found that 20% of respondents saw "using artificial intelligence (AI) to produce visual images from keywords" as a "major advance for the visual arts," and another 26% saw it as a "minor advance" (Funk et al 2023).…”

AI and Myths of Creativity

“…Images which had a significant level of detail were most frequently assumed to be made by human artists, while simple abstract images were assumed to be generated by AI. 5 In reality, all the images in the experiments were generated using a recent StyleGAN2 neural network model that was trained by the scientists on tens of thousands of historical paintings from the wikiart.org site.…”

Artificial Intelligence for marketing communication: moral dilemma, ethics, and customer satisfaction

“…Developing robust defences against such attacks and ensuring the security of AI systems are crucial challenges for the future. Collaboration and regulation also stand as critical challenges in the future of AI (Lima et al, 2021). AI is a global technology that transcends national borders, and ensuring responsible development and deployment necessitate international cooperation and consensus on ethical standards and legal frameworks.…”