Workshop Proceedings of the 20th International
AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Workshop: SocialLLM: Large Language Models for Social Reasoning and Simulation
DOI: 10.36190/2026.69Generative artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to produce images that resemble human-created art, but public judgments of these works remain shaped by more than appearance alone. This study examines how people evaluate AI-generated and human-created art across age groups and survey-language contexts through a multilingual survey administered in English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Using responses from 150 consenting participants, we analyze both general beliefs about AI and creativity and artwork-level evaluations of six visual stimuli. The results show that works perceived as human-made were rated more favorably than works perceived as AI-generated across dimensions such as originality, authenticity, technical skill, and professional appropriateness. Familiarity with AI was associated with greater openness toward AI creativity, while formal creative training was associated with stronger skepticism. Survey-language groups also differed in their views of AI as a creative agent and in their perceptions of threat to artists' livelihoods. At the same time, respondents showed strong agreement on the need for transparency and labeling, but much less agreement on authorship and intellectual-property ownership. Because younger people will help shape the future cultural and institutional response to generative AI, the study also gives particular attention to the attitudes of under-18 and young adult respondents. Overall, the findings suggest that public responses to AI-generated art are structured not only by aesthetic judgment, but also by beliefs about authorship, intention, legitimacy, and the role of human creativity.