How AI Is Disrupting the Art Market

AI is already reshaping how the art world talks about originality and authorship. I’ve had people ask me, half-joking, whether I ‘use AI,’ the way you might ask a photographer if they shoot film or digital. My answer is that my work is physical: paint, weight, friction, time. But I still feel the presence of AI because we’re all now used to seeing images generated instantly. Here’s the difference I keep returning to: a painting records presence. You can trace hesitation, correction, insistence. You can feel gravity in a brushstroke. You can see where I almost lost the piece and then recovered it. That evidence of struggle is not a flaw; it’s the soul of the work. For me, that human residue is the value. Collectors tell me they respond to that physical honesty, because it feels like time made visible, not an effect. I don’t think painting is threatened by AI. I think painting reminds us that being in a room with something made by a body still matters.