Abstract

Public discourse sometimes frames AI as an existential threat to arts: a force that industrializes creativity, normalizes “good enough”, and retrains human taste toward lower expectations. Yet artists are not passive recipients of this technological shift. This paper argues that the relationship between AI and the arts is not a single story of replacement, nor a simple celebration of new tools. It is a contested space that gives rise to a countervailing thesis: artists are actively appropriating AI as a new aesthetic, new material, and new language, and, in doing so, can shape not only artistic practice but also the societal narratives that will govern AI’s place in human life.  

We argue that art performs a fundamentally political function in the AI age: to reveal hidden questions inside given answers, to disrupt complacent narratives, and to cultivate the empathy and critical consciousness required to govern increasingly powerful systems. The central problem is not whether AI will enter culture, this is already underway, but under what conditions arts and AI become partners in creation rather than competitors, and how artistic integrity can persist amid acceleration, market incentives, and emerging claims of synthetic agency.