Resistance
The harder questions about whether AI belongs in the art world at all.
Is AI Creative, or Just Predictive Regurgitation?
The cleanest accusation against AI art is that it does not create — it only interpolates. The objection deserves patience, because it has something to it. But it collapses the moment we apply it symmetrically — to ourselves.
Is AI Affecting Artists' Livelihoods?
The previous article asked whether AI is creative. This one asks the harder question: regardless of whether AI is creative, is it taking work from people who used to be paid to make pictures? The honest answer is yes — in specific sectors, in measurable ways, on a faster timeline than any previous wave.
Is AI Art Plagiarism by Default?
The accusation is everywhere: AI art is plagiarism, the models are theft engines, and anyone who uses them is benefiting from stolen labor. The accusation is too broad to be true and too pointed to be ignored. Untangling it requires distinguishing two questions that the public conversation has been blurring together for three years.
Should We Be Offended by AI Art?
The fourth and final question of this series is the one nobody quite admits to feeling. Set aside whether AI is creative, whether it takes work from artists, whether it plagiarizes — does the existence of a beautiful AI-generated image, made without anyone struggling, actually *offend* something we believe about what art is for?
AI and the Death of the Artist?
Every generation fears the new tool will replace the human hand. History suggests something more interesting happens instead.
Reflection
Conciliatory follow-ups — where does AI fit, and on what terms?
Does AI Learn From Artists, or Copy Them?
The first cluster of articles took on the harder objections to AI in art. This one opens the second cluster — Reflection — by revisiting the training-data question without the heat. What does a model actually do when it learns? Is it the same thing a young art student does in front of the Velázquez at the Prado? If yes, why does the model's version feel different? And if no, what exactly is the difference?
Is There Room for AI Art in the Art World?
The question sounds binary — does AI art belong in the art world, yes or no? — and turns out, as is now becoming the pattern with these questions, to be a framing question first. The art world is not one room. It is a building with dozens of rooms, each with its own door policy. AI art has already walked into some of them. Others have politely declined. The interesting question is which doors are still being decided.
AI-Augmented Human Art: Where the Most Interesting Work Lives
The first two Reflection articles took apart binaries: learns vs. copies, in or out of the art world. This third one is positive. It names the case that the first six articles in this series have all been quietly pointing toward — AI-augmented human art, where the artist remains at the center and the AI serves the work the artist is making. This is where the policy questions, the curatorial questions, and the aesthetic questions all become tractable at once. It is also where the most interesting working practice of the late 2020s is happening.
The Camera Didn't Kill Painting
A historical tour of creative technologies that were supposed to end art — and instead reinvented it.
Practical Aspects
Ethics in practice — what working artists actually have to decide.
Ethical Use of AI in Creating Art
The Resistance cluster argued about whether AI in art is legitimate at all. The Reflection cluster reframed the question. The Practical cluster opens here, with the question every working artist who has decided to use AI now needs a precise answer to: what does it look like to do this *well*, on terms that earn the trust of audiences, collectors, clients, and the artist's own future self? This is the artist-facing ethics of using AI to create work. The training-side ethics — the rights of the artists whose work AI was built on — is the next article.
When the AI Made Up a Story About Our Founder
A hallucination caught, a guardrail strengthened, and what this near-miss says about every AI-assisted publication on the web. The AI invented a relative in my voice while generating an AI-persona commentary for one of our articles; our editorial review process and human-in-the-loop caught it before publication. Here is exactly how the failure happened, how the layered audit held when one safeguard had regressed, and what every operation publishing AI-assisted content should learn from a near-miss most operations would never see.
Who Profits When Machines Create?
The economics of AI art raise urgent questions about value, compensation, and the future of creative labor.
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