Este. The point about the same notes conveying something wildly different is apt. The “creative” or “idea” part of art is often the easy part. The actual artistry is in the deeply individual perspective and craft the artist brings to the subject.
The halls of great museums are adorned with endless examples of the same subject: the Gods, the Saints, the nude, the landscape, the sea, the garden. We are transfixed by the great pieces because the artist has gone beyond mechanical reproduction of the subject and makes us see something familiar in the way the artist wants us to see it.
And that is something AI can’t do by definition because it can have no intentionality or perspective. AI can produce a passable version of an El Greco cityscape when prompted but it can never, ever see the world in an original way like El Greco did and put that vision onto canvas because it can’t see anything at all. And that will always be the difference in what it spits out.
Similar with literature. Having a great idea for a story is easy and we have pretty much tapped out basic ideas for plots. Shakespeare only wrote two original plots. The artistry is in the hard part, the actual writing. AI will never have its own voice or be able to understand the motivations of a character and thus cannot produce anything of real value.
I am not saying here that AI art won’t be popular. It will be, but it will be terrible.