From tool to Coauthor

The integration of generative artificial intelligence into contemporary artistic practices requires reconsidering creativity, authorship, and originality, transforming relationships between artist, tool, and artwork. Unlike conventional digital technologies, which execute operations defined by creators, generative systems exhibit operational autonomy, producing partly unpredictable visual configurations. This raises questions about algorithmic intervention and the possibility of attributing co-authorship to artificial intelligence systems. This article examines the relationship between human creators and generative technologies through computational creativity, distributed authorship, and philosophical perspectives on nonhuman agency. It distinguishes systems’ operational autonomy from artists’ intentional autonomy, arguing that algorithmic participation does not necessarily imply creative subjectivity comparable to human experience. It also examines the aesthetic and conceptual implications of human–machine collaboration and the reorganisation of artistic practices through generation, selection, interpretation, and post-production. The study argues that generative artificial intelligence reconfigures human authorship, shifting creative activity from direct execution toward intention formulation, system configuration, and critical evaluation. Artists therefore retain a decisive role in directing the process and taking responsibility for its artistic outcomes. Algorithmic co-authorship serves as a conceptual tool for understanding these emerging production relationships, without implying legal authorship or artificial consciousness.