My kids spot AI art from miles away, a lot better than I can. Sometimes they can explain why the art is AI (and they are right), but sometimes they just feel something is off. My kids despise AI generated art, find it 'creepy' and 'soulless', turn away in disgust and look down at the publisher. This is not my teaching, they bring this home from school.

Thinking through how genAI works, it generates patterns along the lines of what humans do. AI 'averages' our collective output into something that could be relevant for the input prompt. What it regurgitates might not have existed before 'as is', but it is not going to be original or radically new.

Sometimes mediocre is enough. Sometimes you just want an image of a smart looking businessman (or woman) talking on the phone on the right side of your slide, because you don't want it to be empty. (I hate such distractions, I prefer empty.) AI can generate a 'consistently strong' image of businessman (or woman) for you, and can do it cheaper and faster than any human could.

Art should say something original, and AI is never going to cut that. This won't get better in next release, won't be patched, this is the nature of how it works. The prompt can be original, but the text/image/video the AI outputs is merely aggregating/combining what is already out there.

AI art can sometimes fool me, and tomorrow's tech may fool me even more. I am glad the next generation (or a part of it) keeps an eye out, has learned to spot it and has a very strong opinion.

I don't think AI would ever replace a real artist in a real art job. It does replace the craftsman who draws yet another cute looking animal, and it may eliminate such craftsmanship jobs. Real art jobs it will never replace.

This post was first published on Linkedin here on 2026-09-06.