The AI of your Dreams - What is Art anymore?

When I first heard of the AI generated artwork winning a fine art competition, it was honestly not surprising. With NFT's taking over the world the last couple of years, what else can come as shocking? 

Screengrab from Discord

But when you actually log into Discord or any other AI generator websites, and start inputting words as prompts to be generated visually, it's all quite entertaining. You can spend hours rearranging the same sentence and receiving hundreds of options of what a "hairy dachshund in Venice" can look like. But how is this art?

Just like most NFT's I see out there, there's something almost creepy about images that are generated online. I would dare to say soulless. But through the history of art, there has always been instances when new technologies are applied to art making and weary old critics have described them as such. Photography wasn't even considered art for a while. Of course now we know this is a bit absurd, and that when a camera is used by the right artist, a photograph is equally or more of an artwork than any other medium. So I really don't want to be a weary old critic saying that AI art isn't art... 

I think we're about to see some beautiful digital images being made, but I'm more excited to see how artists will learn to use AI as tools for their wider practice. 

For now, here's the AI of my hairy dachshund I was talking about: