In a preliminary study, original paintings were labeled AI more often than AI images were.

Among definite answers, participants identified the source correctly about 45 percent of the time.

A polished appearance may fit our image of AI even when the work predates computers.

Take a look at the two moonlit scenes below. One was painted in 1839. The other was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in 2026. Which one would you choose as the work of a human artist?

Before looking for the answer, consider what guided your choice. The light? The details? Perhaps one looks a little too polished, while the other feels more natural. How confident are you that those qualities tell you who made it?

I find this question interesting because it asks us to examine something we might otherwise take for granted: what human creativity is supposed to look like.

When the Original Looks Artificial

In a preliminary, unpublished study, I asked 202 U.S. adults to judge images drawn from five 19th-century paintings and five AI-generated versions of the same scenes. Each participant saw five images, presented individually in random order, and identified each as human-made, AI-generated, or something they were unsure about.

Among the 920 answers that named a source, participants were correct about 45 percent of the time. For........

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