[akprasad]

For many people (most?), part of appreciating art is to engage with it beyond mere color and shape. I mean context about the artist themselves, and their life and work, and what they were trying to articulate, and why they made the choices that they did. All of this is embedded in a social context in which art expresses intention and meaning and some artifact of human experience.

It's because many/most people feel and understand this context that they react so differently to artwork that they know is forged. If a painting were just an issue of color and shape, forgery would be irrelevant to how we relate to art. But for most, a painting is embedded in the social context I described above, and forgery feels like a violation of that contract.

AI art seems to fall in a similar category, since AI systems are not social agents and not human beings.

[Lerc]

There are different levels of art, some of it is just something nice to look at. There is is no shame in that and often that is exactly what the artist was intending, it shouldn't be considered a lesser art, just a single form of it.

Other forms of art are what I think of as "an invitation to consider" which could range from a painting to a collection of chairs pointed at a small window (and beyond). There is a degree of snobbishness within the art community about the former, but really much less than you might expect. This, I think correlates with the survey's findings on open-mindedness and acceptance.

The nature of provenance and forgery is a completely different beast. The thing that is valued (in monetary terms) is the same intangible thing that NFTs trade, and when you think about it it makes as little sense.

There are instances where forgers have been caught and art owners have resisted wider investigations because it might reveal that something they own is a forgery. In that respect they really don't care if it is a work by the original artist but that it is believed that it is a work by the original artist.

In a similar vein is the peculiar case of Milli-Vanilli where the artwork was audio media but considered fake because of the artificial supplementary material.

In some respects I might even consider AI art to have an advantage by being unencumbered by such shenanigans.

[akprasad]

I cut a digression on forgery to keep my comment short, but my focus is less on provenance and the habits of art owners and more on what it feels like to look at a painting that you know is forged (or copied, etc.) The mental story around that painting, which is half of the fun and most of the meaning, is quite different.