Does AI Art Devalue Human Art? Part II: Collaboration, Productivity, and the Expansion of Creativity

Red Reverie in the Fog. In the city which canonized light, even rain remembers. A man walks — not toward the tower, but through it, as though its iron lattice were no more solid than time. His red umbrella is a defiance against monochrome, a wound fluttering in a dream. Above, birds scatter not as symbols but as fragments — of thought, of consequence, of all that refuses to land. This is not Paris, not really, but the idea of a place where longing pretends to have a destination. Each step is a question, unanswered. Figures drift past as echoes, silhouettes of those who once believed in permanence. Yet he moves on. The birds keep flying. The rain keeps falling. And the world, smeared in oil and forgetting, continues its performance.


You’ve just seen what happens when AI generates the visual, and another AI writes the story. But it’s you who reads it. That’s the point.

These images and words are lenses through which we see what AI art might force us to ask: what is meaning? What is value? What is human in human art?

The Shape of a New Imagination

In Part I of this series, we explored the skepticism surrounding AI art: the fear of oversaturation, the unresolved questions of copyright, and the anxiety that abundance diminishes originality. These concerns are important, and they demand attention. Yet they tell only half the story. The other half is about opportunity.

What if AI isn’t the artist but the muse—offering fragments—while the art is human: choosing, refining, and weaving a story from its gifts?

What if AI is not the artist but the muse, offering fragments of imagination and chance — and the real art lies in the human act of choosing, refining, and weaving story into its gifts? Far from devaluing human art, AI tools may offer artists a way to expand their practice, accelerate their experimentation, and engage new audiences. History suggests that technologies once feared as threats often end up being woven into the fabric of artistic practice. The camera, the printing press, even Photoshop—all were disruptive, and all became essential. AI is beginning to take the same path.

Making More, Differently

One of the most overlooked benefits of AI is how it helps artists explore ideas. Every painter, sculptor, or photographer faces the problem of iteration. How do you work through a dozen possibilities for composition before committing hours or days to one? Traditionally, artists filled sketchbooks with studies or created maquettes in clay. Today, AI can act as a kind of rapid sketch partner.

Artists quoted in Artsy describe this use clearly. Sougwen Chung, a multimedia artist who blends robotics and AI, explains that the technology becomes part of her “co-authorship,” helping her generate structures she can then reinterpret with ink and performance. Mario Klingemann, an early AI artist, uses generative models to provoke “serendipitous accidents” that he can build on. It amplifies discovery without outsourcing creativity.

Just as a photographer may use Photoshop to adjust lighting without replacing the act of taking the photograph, artists use AI to get further, faster.

Another point often lost in public debate is that AI doesn’t replace the hours of labor an artist invests in final work. Just as a photographer may use Photoshop to adjust lighting without replacing the act of taking the photograph, artists use AI to get further, faster. A digital painter might generate twenty concepts for a scene before choosing one to refine by hand. A printmaker might use AI to test palettes.

Rather than devalue human effort, these tools can make that effort more focused. Artists spend less time on false starts and more on execution. This mirrors the way CAD software transformed architecture. The program didn’t eliminate architects. It allowed them to iterate faster, test structures more rigorously, and ultimately build more ambitious projects.

Opening the Studio Doors

AI also lowers barriers for those who may not have access to traditional training. That doesn’t mean untrained users become “artists” overnight. But it does mean more people can enter the conversation. Historically, every expansion of access—whether cheap printing in the 16th century or the handheld camera in the 20th—has broadened the cultural field. Not all outcomes are good, but the expansion itself enriches society.

Some established artists see this democratization as a threat. Yet others welcome it. Concept artist Refik Anadol, known for his immersive data-driven installations, argues that AI “opens new doors of imagination” for both professionals and amateurs. For him, the significance lies not in replacing artists, but in creating a more diverse ecosystem of creators.

Curators of Meaning in a Crowded World

Of course, the concern about oversaturation remains valid. Tens of millions of AI images flood platforms every day, and few stand out. But this problem doesn’t devalue art itself. It shifts stakes toward curation. In a world of infinite images, the challenge is not scarcity of content but scarcity of meaning. Which works are worth pausing for? Which deserve to be in your home or gallery?

This is where organizations like Mindset Art Collective place their emphasis. By selecting, filtering, and presenting images with context and care, we restore scarcity in a different way. Not through limited production, but through selective presentation. Curated AI works can exist alongside traditional art in homes and public spaces, offering new experiences without displacing the old.

When synthesizers first appeared, musicians and critics feared the end of ‘real’ music.

There is also a lesson from music. When synthesizers first appeared, musicians and critics feared the end of “real” music. Analog purists dismissed electronic instruments as fake. Yet synthesizers are now integral to genres from classical crossover to hip-hop. The point wasn’t that machines replaced musicians, but that they gave them new sounds to work with.

AI in visual art may follow a similar trajectory. Generative systems expand the palette of possibilities. They won’t erase oil painting or watercolor, just as synths didn’t erase violins. They will coexist, sometimes in tension, sometimes in harmony.

Learning from Law, Looking Ahead

Critics are right to focus on training data and copyright. Courts are now drawing lines. In 2025, two Northern District of California decisions held that using books to train large models was fair use on the records before them, while faulting Anthropic for keeping a permanent library of pirated books. According to analyses of Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta, training was treated as transformative, but storing pirated copies was not.

Scholars explain why the doctrine feels stretched. Generative AI pushes on the idea–expression boundary and weakens the role of “substantial similarity” when outputs result from prompts rather than direct copying. In practice, copyright in many AI outputs will be thin, and similarity alone will not carry most cases.

The machine doesn’t care. It doesn’t feel. But I do. The meaning is in what I do with what it gives me.

At the same time, compensated training is growing. Adobe states Firefly trains on licensed or permitted content and pays Stock contributors a Firefly bonus. Shutterstock both pays contributors through a fund and says AI-licensing deals generated $104M in 2023. These are not full solutions, but they show a move toward paid inputs.

History offers a template. Sampling law evolved from early lawsuits to a licensing ecosystem encapsulated by “get a license or do not sample.” Visual art can follow a similar route: clearer licensing for training data, more opt-in datasets, and predictable compensation.

The most important argument for AI art is that it doesn’t erase the human story. Even when algorithms generate images, beings with beating hearts set the prompts, choose the outputs, and decide how to use them. The significance comes from that human interpretive frame. As one artist put it in Artsy, “The machine doesn’t care. It doesn’t feel. But I do. The meaning is in what I do with what it gives me.”

A hotel may not want a $10 million canvas in their lobby, but it might want a rotating series of evocative images tuned to the time of day.

That human element is not going away. If anything, it becomes more important. Collectors, curators, and audiences will still want to know who is behind a work, why it was made, and how it fits into a broader conversation.

In the end, AI art may not carry the same kind of scarcity-driven price tag as a Vermeer or a Basquiat. But that does not mean it has no value. Its worth may lie in other dimensions: immediacy, adaptability, contextual resonance. A hotel may not want a $10 million canvas in their lobby, but it might want a rotating series of evocative images tuned to the time of day. A family might not invest in a print, but they might welcome new art on their wall every morning.

This is not devaluation. It is reframing. Human art will continue to command prestige and permanence. AI art will carve out its own space, offering something different but complementary. The two can sit alongside, as they always have when new tools emerged.

Conclusion

The artwork and narrative at the top aren’t decoration — they’re a signal. Together they model an experiment in how we read images: an AI-created work given voice through human interpretation. The aim isn’t clarity but tension, inviting surprise and skepticism, while showing what can happen when human imagination works with machine invention.

The skeptics are right to raise alarms. But the story does not end there. AI art also represents possibility: for productivity, for exploration, for democratization, and for curation. The key is not to pit AI against human art, but to recognize the ways each can enrich the other.

At Mindset Art Collective, we believe in that coexistence. We encourage people to keep hanging original works on their walls, to keep exploring existing galleries, and to keep valuing the human struggle behind traditional art. But we also invite them to try something new: curated, living collections of digital art that refresh daily, sparking imagination in the spaces where they live and work.

AI is not the end of human art. It is another beginning.

Sources

  • Artsy: 6 artists (Chung, etc.). Artsy

  • Refik Anadol interviews: Right Click Save 2023; Wired profile for context. rightclicksave.com

  • Sougwen Chung statements: Artist essay; NYT guest essay page. sougwen.com

  • Mario Klingemann interviews: Interalia; CLOT Magazine interview (2024). Interalia Magazine

  • Christie’s Edmond de Belamy: Lot page; Artnet coverage. Christie's

  • Sampling/licensing history: Bridgeport case (abridged opinion); overview. Berkman Klein Center

  • Columbia Science & Technology Law Review (STLR), 2025 — “How Generative AI Turns Copyright Law Upside Down.” Columbia Library Journals

Vellorin

Vellorin is the Curator at Large for Mindset Art Collective, working with artists, prompt engineers, and creative partners to bring fresh, thought-provoking art to homes, businesses, and public spaces. With an eye for both timeless works and bold new visions, Vellorin shapes MAC’s evolving catalog to surprise, inspire, and transform the spaces we share.

Previous
Previous

Artist Profile: Refik Anadol—Memory, Data, and the Poetics of Imagination

Next
Next

Does AI Art Devalue Human Art? Part I: Skepticism, History, and the Question of Value