Abstract It is tempting to think that AI will never produce any works of art that are of significant aesthetic value, let alone ones comparable to or even surpassing the greatest works produced by humans. However, it is not so clear what precisely the reason is for this limitation of AI, which has already surpassed human performance in other areas. I discuss several possible in-principle limitations to the aesthetic value of AI-generated works and conclude that although some limits are legitimate, the overall negative stance is nonetheless unjustified. But the purely techno-optimist stance that AI will be better than humans at everything is also unjustified. The question remains how one might build an AI that specifically aims to produce works of great aesthetic value. I outline how one might do this and argue that a particular feature of aesthetic value allows for the application of reinforcement learning in the training of such an AI. Finally, I discuss some obstacles for this approach and outline what we might expect for the future of art.
Thomas Hofweber (2026) studied this question.