This article is an opinion piece, it concerns recent technological developments and is a reflection on value.

You can now go onto a cheap or free program and generate an image of your choice. It will have any aesthetic you want and be about anything you can think of and you can print it off (high fidelity) and stick it on your wall. Contrary to the opinion of many, this is not a bad thing. After all, technology frees us from scarcity, so AI generated images have freed us from a certain form of scarcity. The reason we have had so many customers over the years is because they wanted an oil painting like the one that they saw in art galleries, but they wanted their own unique piece of work. They wanted a work which tells their own story with the same high standards that wealthy art patrons have been able to afford. AI generated art is a step along that path. 

Some of our artists, especially graphic artists, have lost a lot of work due to the adoption of AI Art. However, interestingly enough, our oil painters have never been so busy. So why is this? It seems to be because our oil and acrylic painters produce something with a certain texture that adds depth. This texture, of the brush stroke, the globules of paint, does something for the viewer and adds a depth that cannot be replicated by a printer. In fact, we have many people emailing us AI generated works which our artists then paint. Such orders will now outnumber clients who simply want their children’s graduation or wedding photos painted.

It seems as if even though technology will bring down the price of products, it will not take away our ability to create some form of value. Photography did not destroy painting, it merely encouraged painters to create new styles, you can argue that it was photography which forced artists to create expressionism and surrealism, bringing about more dreamlike renditions of reality to the fore. In the same way, the new technology will probably push our established, stagnating art world in new realms that we have not yet anticipated.

As to price, yes, prices will continue to go down, soon, you will even be able to have a machine to directly paint or squirt oils onto canvas in a convincing enough manner. We already have machines which will bring down the price of sculpting and thus herald a new age of affordable stone sculpture. However, our perception of value seems to be deeply rooted in a work’s provenance and story. So I do not think new AI works will devalue human art in any way, a dealer will still look for effort and human input. Furthermore, human artists now have the ability to draw inspiration from and visualise works they would not have previously imagined. It is easy to imagine how a person with a long career painting still life can now visualise something fantastical using a prompt and then incorporating that into their work.

All times of technological transition are hard in the short term, traditional artists cannot be expected to enthusiastically embrace technology that has been trained on human work while simultaneously bringing down the cost of manually rendered work. That said, this should be a time of experimentation for all of us, especially those with established careers. Art of all kinds will become more unique, tailored and it will reflect each individual’s whim and values. No longer will established colleges of artists be able to dictate to the public what is prestigious, what is tasteful or what is deserving of merit, that will be dependent on the individual, whose preferences will be a narrow niche’ of their own creation. That does not mean the establishment will ever stop moaning.