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A new AI art trend surfaces online almost every week. Personal photographs superimposed onto the familiar Ghibli frame, faces reimagined through Renaissance chiaroscuro, and so on. With just a few taps, images are transformed and “art” is generated not through training or personal touch, but through computation. The results are both instantly gratifying and endlessly shareable.
Elsewhere, fine artists work at a different pace. Hands press into clay; paint is layered, scraped back, reworked. Time stretches, becoming a condition of the work itself. The studio’s calm is punctured by repetition, doubt, brief frustration, and a thousand small, incremental choices. Nothing is instant; there is no prompt. Each artwork demands patience, attention to detail, and raw emotion.
Why AI Trends Win Attention
For Seoul-based multidisciplinary artist Bak Joo Young, who is formally trained in fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art, “There’s definitely some sort of desecration in the borrowing of the Ghibli image. Parody can be powerful artistically, but the mixture of AI and trend inevitably hollows out meaning. Something sacred is flattened into something consumable.”
AI-generated art trends thrive because they are frictionless. Taking part requires no prior skill or artistic training. When you’re simply typing prompts, there’s no commitment beyond curiosity. What comes out is immediate spectacle sans the rigorous creative process. Social media platforms, engineered for novelty, amplify these trends rapidly, each iteration more engaging than the last. In this landscape, art begins to resemble an aesthetic vending machine. The pleasure lies not in creative authorship, but in participation.
AI art exists because humans trained it and fed it aesthetics. It trends because we built systems that reward replication over reflection. Social media algorithms amplify what survives the scroll, reflecting our collective cultural appetite in real time.
Content-Led Patronage
When asked about his venture into content creation, artist Lee Kyeong Hwan, who dabbles in ceramics, acrylic image-making, and runs his own art studio in Seoul, South Korea, reflects, “As an artist, I want my work to reach more people and foster meaningful interaction. Today, social media and content creation are inseparable from that goal. I see content creation as part of my responsibility; it’s a bridge between my artistic practice and the wider world.”
Gone are the days when artists could just hold exhibitions and spread the word to garner patrons. For artists today, creating the artwork is only half the job. The contemporary art economy demands visibility, not occasionally, but continuously. Process videos, studio reels, and time-lapse clips of creation have become essential, transforming what was once private practice into public performance.
The Labour Of Visibility
This shift has redefined artistic labour. Artists are now expected to be editors, narrators, and strategists alongside being makers. The act of creation is interrupted by the need to document; the studio becomes both workspace and stage.
Nam Jeung Hoon is a South California-based artist whose striking biomorphic ceramic sculptures interrogate themes of vulnerability and self-preservation; talking about balancing artistic integrity with the need to create content, he admits, “I was making one piece and creating one video for it every day. Because the work itself required so much time, I spent my days in the studio, then filmed and edited late into the night until I fell asleep. I’d post the video in the morning and go straight back to the studio for another round of making.
I was sleeping about four hours a night and barely left my home for weeks. That imbalance helped my follower count grow faster than average, but it also forced me to step back. Since then, I’ve focused more on the quality of my work rather than the quantity.”
Spectacle, Persona, and the Audience Gaze
As online attention becomes currency, the artist becomes part of the spectacle. Audiences are drawn not only to the work but to the person behind it, their appearance, charisma, and lifestyle. This parasocial dynamic is not without consequence. While visibility brings opportunity, it also imposes expectation: to remain engaging, desirable, and endlessly productive. Over time, the pressure to perform can hollow out the impulse that drew artists to their practice in the first place.
Academically trained in film and fine arts, the work of San Francisco-based artist PQHAÜS extends beyond visual painting; each piece is rooted in storytelling. He describes his paintings as short films suspended in a single frame.
Explaining the shift in audience engagement, he notes, “The audience’s attention span online is short, and I often felt pressured to produce work at an unhealthy pace just to maintain the attention I was receiving. That pressure eventually led to burnout, and I reached a point where I did not want to paint at all.
To a certain extent, I tailored my work to attract attention, but there is only so much of myself I can bend before it becomes untrue to my practice. Eventually, I let that go. I chose to focus entirely on my own work ethic and my own philosophy when creating art. That shift has allowed me to stay rooted in authenticity rather than reaction.”
Art That Cannot Be Fully Simulated
Not all art translates easily to the screen. While painting can be simulated and images endlessly generated, media like ceramics, sculpture, and textiles remain stubbornly physical.
Commenting on the topic, Jeung Hoon explains, “I work with ceramics because the material doesn't let you lie. Clay records everything you do to it. Every hesitation, every impulse, every mistake. Fire exposes whatever you tried to hide. There’s no shortcut, no illusion, no version of the work that isn’t earned.”
As a corollary, he adds, “I’m sure there are AI softwares that work with 3D printers to produce physical objects such as ceramics. Appreciation would then depend on what the story behind the piece is. There are artists who make certain shapes purely for aesthetic reasons, and artists who have a specific philosophy behind every shape they make. If there are fully simulated, commercial AI designs at every corner, handmade pieces may take most of the attention from the crowd.”
Coexistence In The Art Ethos
Artists remain divided on what “AI art” represents. For some, it threatens authorship and devalues labour. For others, it is simply another tool that can be used thoughtfully. These positions are not mutually exclusive. What emerges is not a binary, but a spectrum. The future of art, it seems, is a negotiation to be navigated.
“I have seen people use AI to alter and re-photograph my work in ways that completely distort the original image. I reported each case, and they were taken down.
I support the use of AI when it serves humanity in ways that are not meant to replace people but to enhance the quality of care and efficiency. However, when it comes to the creation of art that originates entirely from human experience, I am completely against its use. It diminishes what makes human expression unique and alive. It strips away the colors that come from lived experience, emotion, and imperfection, which are the very things that give art its meaning,” notes PQHAÜS.
Reckoning a similar sentiment, Kyeong Hwan believes, “I don’t see AI as a threat; what matters is how we absorb and reinterpret these changes. The center of creation must still remain 'me,' and AI can be a tool that expands that center. The important thing is to use your hands and sensibility to continue creating, questioning, and experimenting.”
AI art replacing artists is a concern that naturally arises, delving into the idea Joo Yeong explains, “The question 'Is painting dead?' has appeared again and again throughout history. When photography first emerged, painters feared disappearance. The conversation always came back, during the early 20th-century European movements, conceptual art, digital art, and now AI. And yet, artists persevere. As long as there is a body, a breath, a gesture, handmade art will surely endure.”
So, Where Does Art Stand Today?
Art resists a singular definition. For Jeung Hoon, “Art is the physical record of truth, even the uncomfortable parts. I think I pursued art because I needed a place where the weight I carried could turn into something other than damage. It is the moment something inside you stops being a burden and becomes a language.”
As time passes and technology evolves, media corresponding to art appreciation also evolves. What doesn’t change is the sheer passion and commitment that have driven artists worldwide since time immemorial.
Kyeong Hwan explains, “The driving force that keeps me committed to this medium that requires time, patience, and consistency is simple, it’s because I am human. I believe humans need to express themselves to truly feel alive, whether through ceramics, painting, or writing. I confirm my existence through the act of making. The process is often uncomfortable, uncertain, even painful. But I believe the state of discomfort, anxiety, and struggle is what allows the work to deepen. By passing through them, something more meaningful emerges, and new possibilities open.”
Perhaps art has always existed in the tension between permanence and change. In studios around the world, hands still move guided by ideas and fixations, and in that ongoing act of creation, something unquantifiable, precious, and distinctly humane continues to live.
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