I have yet to hear any argument on why humans are so necessary for art and why AI can’t produce it that doesn’t rely on some metaphysical and made up bs like “soul”.

Art is human expression. Art in any form depicts the interpretation of one’s personal experiences, ideas and feelings. That might sound like metaphysical and/or made up bs to you but that’s what classifies art as opposed to, like, any depiction of anything. A short story is an artwork, a court transcript isn’t. A movie is an artwork, a video recording of a press conference isn’t. A child’s drawing of a house that’s literally just a square with a triangle is an artwork, an architect’s sketch of a house they’re about to build isn’t.

If I ask an artist to draw a house, the result will be that particular artist’s subjective interpretation of what a house looks like and every stroke of their brush will be influenced by their subjective experiences and influences, and this subjectivity is what makes it “art”. If they just traced over a photograph of a house, even though it might look “better” by some standards, as an artwork it would be significantly lesser. If this is too metaphysical for you, I challenge you to give me a better definition of art. To be fair, I can’t claim that AI art is not art at all, since there is still an element of human expression in the prompt that is given. It’s just, like tracing over a photograph, significantly lesser. Because whatever prompt you give the AI, the result will by virtue of the technology be the most generic interpretation of that prompt. Generative AI can only ever give you the lowest common denominator. AI art minimizes the user’s creative expression and fills the gaps with generic slop, and this is not something that will improve with time, this is literally the core mechanism of any probabilistic model.

So yeah, AI art is lesser art. Any AI artist is a lesser artist. If you wanna consume what Midjourney or Sora have statistically determined to be the most generic slop possible, be my guest. I don’t.