Analysing the Impact of Generative AI in Arts Education: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective of Educators and Students in Higher Education

Abstract

Generative AI refers specifically to a class of Artificial Intelligence models that use existing data to create new content that reflects the underlying patterns of real-world data. This contribution presents a study that aims to show what the current perception of arts educators and students of arts education is with regard to generative Artificial Intelligence. It is a qualitative research study using focus groups as a data collection technique in order to obtain an overview of the participating subjects. The research design consists of two phases: (1) generation of illustrations from prompts by students, professionals and a generative AI tool; and (2) focus groups with students (N = 5) and educators (N = 5) of artistic education. In general, the perception of educators and students coincides in the usefulness of generative AI as a tool to support the generation of illustrations. However, they agree that the human factor cannot be replaced by generative AI. The results obtained allow us to conclude that generative AI can be used as a motivating educational strategy for arts education.