Artifacts Without Authors: Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Authorship
Nurbay Irmak · Metaphysics · 2024
Artifacts are often characterized as intentional products of human activities, suggesting that they must have authors. However, contrary to this common characterization, I argue that there exist novel examples of artifacts that lack authors. This novelty arises directly from the emergence of generative artificial intelligence applications. I provide several examples of such authorless artifacts and address potential objections to their existence.