During the study, people were told whether the art they were shown was made by a human or generated by a computer and then they were asked to rate the artwork and to share how it made them feel. Based on the information they were given, the volunteers then assigned emotions to both human-made and computer-generated art.
However, the twist was that half of the time the volunteers were not told the truth about whether they saw computer-generated art or not. Still, when the researchers looked at all the data they noticed that people rated human-made art slightly higher – even if they were given the wrong information and been told that it was computer art.
This was a very small study, with only 48 volunteers who each looked at 24 pieces of art, so it shouldn't be taken to have huge implications for how people see any form of computer-generated art, but it’s an interesting observation that the researchers hope to explore further, according to their researchIt’s also worth considering that when we see computer-generated art, there is often some kind of human element to it.
However, even if you look at a gallery of computer-generated art that didn’t use AI based on human-made art, there is a good chance that a person was involved either in creating the algorithm that generates the art or in selecting which images to show to people. It’s always difficult to completely eliminate human input, so it’s not entirely surprising that computer generate art elicits emotion. Still, it’s interesting that very similar looking abstract art made by humans elicits even stronger emotions, at least in this study. Was there something that made people notice the human element in it? That’s a question for a future research study.