The Aesthetic Risk of AI: The Threat of Recommender Systems to Aesthetic Welfare

Recommender systems (RSs) on platforms like Netflix and Spotify personalize user experiences but also raise concerns about their impact on aesthetic welfare. This paper evaluates two important arguments against RS-driven platforms. The satisfaction argument claims that RSs harm aesthetic welfare by steering users toward profitable content that is less satisfying because it is less aligned with their personal tastes. I argue that while RS-driven platforms may exhibit a bias toward promoting profitable content, they are unlikely to do so aggressively enough to significantly harm user satisfaction, as such a strategy carries inherent risks and offers uncertain profit advantages compared to catering to users’ existing preferences. Moreover, even if RSs consistently steer engagement toward profitable content that diverges from a user’s personal taste, they would likely need to reshape user preferences in the process to maintain engagement. In such cases, aesthetic enjoyment would remain largely intact, as the altered taste would align with the promoted content. The autonomy argument suggests that RSs push users into patterns of aesthetic engagement that conflict with their core aesthetic values – such as those who prefer niche or non-mainstream content – due to apparent RS biases favoring popular and mainstream material. I contend that such authenticity concerns are not particularly worrisome when the core value in question lacks independent normative significance. For example, there is no strong reason to claim that aesthetic users should or need to engage with non-mainstream content. Ultimately, this paper challenges claims about the harms of RS-driven platforms, arguing that their impact on aesthetic well-being is less significant than often assumed.