Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 9, 2025

Exploring the Ethical Dimensions of AI-Generated Art

(Abstract)

Ouyang Youquan

Artificial intelligence (AI) brings to art not only new creative tools and transformed artistic forms but also pressing challenges to artistic ethics. The ethical problem of AI-generated art arises from anthropocentric tendencies in the relationship between technology and humanity. Its theoretical logic takes shape as a philosophy of subjectivity expressed in both utopian aspirations at the instrumental level and ethical anxieties at the value level. AI’s “anthropomorphic” intelligence continually reinforces a “pseudo-subjectivity,” generating artistic philosophical derivatives characterized by ethical constancy, identity formation, and material substitution. This risks precipitating a “Ship of Theseus” paradox at the humanistic-ethical level. To guard against the “non-human ethics” of AI-generated art, we must establish a value-aligned belief system defining the boundaries of posthuman intelligence ethics. Humanistic values must provide the basis for legislating future AI-generated art, constructing an “ethical green dam” through both technological ethics and value empowerment. This framework should be complemented by technological, legal, and moral safeguards to mitigate ethical risks and endow AI-generated art with ethical value. Only in this way can the art produced by AI’s “technological Rubik’s Cube” remain a spiritual haven where humanity may dwell poetically.