While the use of technology, of computers, is new, the process is theoretically as old as people have been making art. For example, take Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci had a “prompt” of sorts when he was commissioned by Francesco del Giocondo to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gherardini. The prompt might have gone something like this: “elegant Renaissance portrait of Lisa Gherardini smiling enigmatically against a Tuscan landscape in soft focus.” Leonardo would not have consciously articulated the prompt words, beyond of course the contracted commission to portray Mona Lisa. But his invenzione process, the Italian term for the conceptualization of an artwork before you begin to create it, was including attributes and aspects that were, essentially, prompts. Leonardo kept his invenzione secret, within his mind, perhaps sharing some aspects of his creative thought process with his pupils and assistants, but otherwise it was his intellectual property. Today, an AI artist might keep his or her prompts secret—although in principle no two AI artworks will ever be identical.

The difference with AI is that now someone with no artistic ability or materials at all can call upon the diverse might of all of the images available online to mix and magic them together and create a new digital image. Computers have taken over the other half of the artistic process: disegno. If invenzione was the Renaissance term for conceptualizing an artwork, disegno referred to the physical creation of the work, based on the “prompts” in the artist’s invenzione.
Back in the studios of Renaissance artists, “prompts” took the form of the master (say, Leonardo da Vinci), instructing his apprentices and assistants in how to collectively make paintings that would be sold as Leonardo originals. The most desirable members of a master’s studio were those who could mimic the style of the master seamlessly, so you couldn’t tell where the master’s work began and the assistant’s ceased. There are many versions of Mona Lisa, but only one confirmed as by Leonardo. Others may be by him, or have emerged under his supervision from his studio. Others, like Mona Vanna, the so-called “Nude Mona Lisa,” are confirmed as having been made by his assistants—that one by Salai. The “prompt” given to all members of his studio was “in the style of Leonardo da Vinci.” If we imagine Mona Vanna in AI terms, the prompt might be “a nude Mona Lisa in the style of Leonardo da Vinci” and the software might come up with something like Salai’s five-hundred-year-old oil painting.

In the past, this was normal, and it only shifted into forgery and fraud when someone outside of the main artist’s studio, without the master’s blessing, created a work in the style of someone else and tried to pass it off as by that person. There are numerous examples, including Baroque master Luca Giordano forging works in the style of Albrecht Dürer—and convincing one of his patrons to by it as a Dürer original (as described in The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney).

Until now, disegno, making manifest your artistic idea, has required immense artistic skill, like that of Salai, who trained with Leonardo. Now, it requires only access to an AI system.

It must be understood that you, the person using the AI and entering the prompts, are not actually creating digital art yourself. Your role is more like that of Francesco del Giocondo, the commissioner of a digital artwork. Instead of paying Leonardo 100 scuti or whatever he might charge, you pay a small subscription fee to Dall-e or some similar AI art site. The AI borrows ideas for invenzione from millions of images in its database, fishing them out of those fully stocked waters based on your prompt. And AI is also borrowing the artistic abilities of the original creators of those images and Frankensteining together an entirely new image reminiscent of those that match your prompt combination.
While this is no replacement for artists, AI art has democratized who can create digital images that may be beautiful and interesting. They will be technically original, unique, neither copies nor forgeries. They are useful and, as of now, the creator/prompter can hold copyright to them, using them as they like, in things like comic books or book covers or as product logos. The democratization means that anyone, even those without artistic ability of the funds to commission artists and illustrators, can “create” images of interest.