Artificial Intelligence and the Creation of Art Images: From a New Tool to a Major Challenge for Art

e has rapidly transformed the way images are produced. Today, an artist can describe an idea and obtain, within seconds, an image that previously might have required hours of drawing, painting, photography, or technical production. AI image generators have changed the relationship between idea, design, and execution, opening new possibilities for experimenting with visual styles, compositions, lighting, perspectives, and imaginary worlds.

But the most important question is no longer whether AI can create images. It clearly can. The deeper question is what happens to the role of the artist, the meaning of creativity, and the value of an artwork when a machine becomes part of the creative process.

UNESCO describes generative AI as a transformative force affecting how culture is produced, distributed, and accessed, while also raising serious questions about artists’ rights, remuneration, cultural diversity, and intellectual property.

AI: Tool or Artist?

Whether an AI-generated image should be considered an artwork depends largely on the role of the human creator. If a person simply enters a short prompt and publishes the first result, human creative involvement may be limited. But when an artist develops the concept, chooses the composition, controls characters, lighting, perspective and narrative, selects among outputs, and makes substantial revisions, AI functions much more like a creative tool.

The U.S. Copyright Office stated in 2025 that merely providing prompts is not, by itself, sufficient to establish copyright, while human creative choices, arrangement, and modification can contribute to copyrightable expression.

Perhaps, therefore, the better question is not “Is AI an artist?” but:

Who is the artist in the age of artificial intelligence?

Speed, Possibility and Risk

One of AI’s greatest advantages is speed. Artists can test dozens of visual concepts, compositions, camera angles, lighting conditions, and narrative possibilities in a very short time.

Yet faster image production does not automatically mean better art.

AI can produce an image, but it cannot guarantee a strong idea, personal vision, or meaningful artistic position.

There is also a paradox: AI can generate enormous visual diversity while potentially encouraging a common and predictable aesthetic. UNESCO has warned that generative AI can produce standardized and predictable outputs, making human intention, originality, and artistic depth increasingly important.

Copyright, Style and the Future of Artists

One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of artists’ works to train AI systems and the ability of these systems to reproduce recognizable visual characteristics. Questions of consent, transparency, compensation, and cultural diversity have therefore become central to the debate. UNESCO has specifically called for informed consent, fair remuneration, transparency, and protection of cultural diversity.

For political cartoonists and illustrators, AI can be extremely useful for brainstorming, visual experimentation, backgrounds, compositions, and developing preliminary ideas. But the heart of a political cartoon remains the idea.

AI can create an unusual politician, a distorted face, or a dramatic scene. It cannot automatically determine what that image should say about power, politics, injustice, or society.

The Future: Human versus Machine?

The future of art may be less about a war between humans and machines and more about collaboration between human creativity and machine capability.

AI can provide speed, variation, and experimentation. The human artist provides meaning, experience, emotion, responsibility, and judgment.

The artist of the future may therefore not be the person who avoids AI, nor the person who simply generates images with it, but the person who knows what to say and knows how to use technology to say it.

Ultimately, an artwork is not defined by the number of details it contains.

What turns an image into art is not necessarily its complexity, but the human vision behind it.

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