Art that can be easily copied by AI is 'meaningless', says Ai Weiwei

Art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is "meaningless", according to the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who believes even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era. Ai Weiwei's comments feed into the current charged debate about the rise of AIs that use data scraped from artists' websites to create "original" images in their style. There have been several class-action lawsuits in the US, and artists whose aesthetic is popular among users of AIs have already reported thousands of images that use their work as a base, often without permission. When asked about the issue, Ai Weiwei said: "That's not a problem. I think that kind of art should [have died] a long time ago," before he criticised art teaching that focuses on creating "realistic" images.