Human Perception of AI-Generated Art: A Comparative Study of Aesthetic Appreciation Between Human-Created and GAN-Generated Works

The integration of artificial intelligence into creative processes has prompted scholarly inquiry into the perceptual equivalence of AI-generated and human-created artworks. This investigation examines human aesthetic judgments of art produced by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) relative to human-authored works. Employing a controlled experimental paradigm with 147 participants, aesthetic evaluations were conducted across dimensions including beauty, emotional resonance, originality, technical proficiency, and overall preference in a blinded assessment. Findings reveal a statistically significant bias favoring human-created art, with elevated ratings in emotional depth and perceived creativity, despite limited ability to discriminate origins. These outcomes elucidate the psychological mechanisms underpinning art appreciation in the context of AI, with implications for computational creativity and ethical considerations in digital art production.