Human and AI Perspectives on Academic Aesthetics

The purpose of this article is to examine how current AI tools can be used in aesthetics research and teaching. We focus in particular on one theme: how traditional ways of describing the field of aesthetics as a whole could relate to descriptions made with the help of artificial intelligence. Describing the field and its main questions is unavoidable when we teach and research aesthetics; our question is, how can AI be used for that? Starting from a new meta-aesthetic tripartite model of aesthetics that we introduce, we raise a set of questions to pave the way to a more detailed examination of how new AI tools can impact academic aesthetics. We are particularly interested in what can— and what should not—be expected from AI models at the moment and whether experts in aesthetics should update their skill-set and approaches to the field.