Bright colors. Dark and gloomy. Colorful palette.
On the surface, these don’t seem like phrases that would stand out to experienced faculty like Heather Schatz as she read through essays from her Art 100 students. But a closer analysis of more than 600 papers revealed to her what non-specific phrasing like this says about a student: They’re using AI.
“That vagueness became a reliable tell,” she said. “AI is not good at writing about art.”
Within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s art department, Schatz isn’t alone in trying to navigate AI and art — and the question of whether the two should come together at all.
In recent semesters, most syllabi at UW-Madison include some form of artificial intelligence policy — ranging from outright bans to permitting students to use it to assist in assignments.
While many STEM students find AI productive in assisting with coursework, student artists told The Daily Cardinal they look at AI with a less favorable lens.
Junior music education major Emerson Janes said he is concerned that AI uses artwork in databases without permission and shortcuts the creative process.
“It’s awful. It’s abhorrent. It needs to be stopped,” he said.
The cross section of AI and art on campus isn’t new. In 2023, the Wisconsin Science Festival hosted a lecture analyzing the ways AI aids artists while also exploring the nuance of authorship and what “art” truly is.
This summer, UW-Madison hosted an “AI and Society” workshop, giving attendees the chance to learn more about AI’s impact on various sectors, including the arts.
By creating spaces to discuss these issues, the university has tried to prepare students for an uncertain and evolving future.
“It provides some really exciting and groundbreaking developments that we can take advantage of, potentially,” UW-Madison digital media Professor Meg Mitchell said.
As one of only a few tech specialists in her department, Mitchell said she sees a variety of ways that students can use AI, but prefers to use it as more of an assistant or brainstorming tool — not something to make visual media.
Mitchell assigns students a collage, where AI use is allowed in a limited capacity — one out of five images in the collage. Even then, students have to follow “a rigorous documentation process.” If she did receive a fully AI-generated assignment, Mitchell said she “would consider having a conversation with the student about plagiarism.”
When photography was first invented, it was seen as antithetical to art. But now, it is revered in museum collections and exhibits much in the same way as paintings.
“I think there is a long history of people being fearful of emerging technologies. I think AI is definitely suffering from a bit of that. I also think AI brings some new challenges that are a little bit more complicated than something like photography,” Mitchell said.
Communication Arts Professor Jeremy Morris shared a similar perspective in relation to other artistic mediums in an interview with The Cap Times.
“I think it is always hard to come down on the side of ‘no, this technology should not be used in this space,’” Morris told The Cap Times in September, speaking specifically to AI and music creation. “I think the more interesting question is ‘how do we use it and how does that come to define the things we listen to?’”
Despite some attempts at integration, the uncertainties surrounding AI have left art classes with similarly strict policies to the rest of the university. It remains to be seen exactly how it will eventually be assimilated into media, just as the advancements before it did.
Oliver Gerharz is the arts editor and former podcast director for the Daily Cardinal. He is a journalism major and former host of the Cardinal Call. Follow him on Twitter @OliverGerharz.
