AI in the Studio: Tool, Threat, or Both?

When debates about AI reach the art world, they often arrive shrouded in anxiety: Will AI replace artists? Will machine-made images flood the market? Will ‘real’ art become a luxury item? 

To gain some art-world perspective on these questions, I turned to my good family friend, award-winning fine artist Raj Chaudhuri. Raj has worked for decades with a medium that couldn’t be further from the digital world — oil paint — yet he anticipates that AI will increasingly shape the creative landscape he operates in. Despite his commitment to traditional methods, he’s already begun to see how machine-generated content is becoming a more persistent presence in the art world. 

“I do think we need to embrace this new technology, or we will get left behind — think flip phone users,” he told me. “These models are going to be very sophisticated.”

Artists today who are using AI are doing so through a wide range of tools, many of which blend into workflows that were already digital long before AI art became a hot topic. While the media often focuses on image generators like Midjourney or DALL·E, the reality Raj describes to me seems far more subtle.

For many artists, AI now appears as a series of features incorporated into programs they already use. Adobe Photoshop, for instance, has rolled out a suite of AI-powered functions, from generative fill to automated object removal, built using models developed by Topaz Labs. Artists can improve image quality, stitch together reference photos, recreate missing backgrounds, or alter compositions. None of this necessarily announces itself as AI art, but it nonetheless shapes the early stages of a growing number of artists’ creative processes.

Raj himself has experimented only lightly with AI tools, but he’s seen other artists, especially younger ones, embrace them more readily. When asked for his opinion on these AI-assisted works, he said, “Not real or too real looking!”

Raj’s scepticism toward these machine-assisted images stems from something broader; a belief that the imperfections of human work are what make art meaningful. “The analogy I like to use specifically about paintings that are handmade is: say a quilt or clothing that is handmade has a uniqueness to it [...] the machine-made stuff is mass-produced and has a lot less value when compared with a handmade (human-made) similar object.”

This idea, that art’s worth lies in its irregularities, has taken on new weight as AI permeates creative industries. AI can generate images that are visually stunning and endlessly adjustable. What it can’t do, at least for now, is replicate the small decisions and intuitive leaps that define human artistry. 

This dialogue around AI in art also recalls another recent tech-driven moment: the brief but intense NFT (non-fungible token) boom. A few years ago, NFTs were celebrated as a way to democratise digital art. But as the speculative frenzy fizzled, the art world was left questioning how much of that excitement was about artistic value and how much was about technology for its own sake. The comparison feels apt now. As generative AI floods the internet with endless AI images, some theorists predict that entirely human-made art may become a kind of artisanal rarity, valued for its scarcity. 

If that prediction proves true, the art world may be entering a strange new era, one in which authenticity becomes a measurable commodity, and the presence of a human handiwork becomes a kind of luxury signature. Yet even as analysts warn of great change, Raj remains broadly optimistic about the survival of human artistry. When I asked whether he feared losing his job to machines, he answered quickly. “Not at all,” he said. “We don’t make widgets.” 

For him, AI is neither salvation nor apocalypse, but a tool whose impact depends on how thoughtfully it is used. “Any tool that helps me make better art is a good thing,” he told me, “The challenge is how much you rely on it.” 

Perhaps that is where the future of art will hinge: not on whether AI usage becomes ubiquitous, but on how artists negotiate their relationship to it. If NFTs taught us anything, it’s that technology may change how art is made, but human vision defines what makes it matter.

Illustration by Iona Talbot Rice