Appreciating AI Art: Aesthetic Vices, Virtues, and Values

AI-generated art elicits two characteristic failures of aesthetic judgment: wholesale dismissal rooted in bias, and uncritical embrace that mistakes algorithmic fluency for creative vision. We argue that both are aesthetic vices: snobbery and naïveté. We propose discerning openness as the virtue that corrects them. We identify three loci of aesthetic value available to the virtuously open appreciator: the product, the human AI artist, and the AI (and its creators). Drawing on Matherne’s account of aesthetic flourishing, we argue that the capacity for such engagement is conducive to a flourishing aesthetic life in the AI era.