AI can recreate art created by humans. That’s why it can never replace it.

As AI continues to invade every aspect of our lives, there is a lingering fear or hope, depending on your point of view: AI will one day take over art. The internet is full of quizzes that show that most laypeople cannot tell the difference between AI-generated art (digital images of paintings, prose) and reality. Several studies have shown that people who are shown AI-generated and human-made art, but are not told which art is which, tend to prefer the AI-generated art, be it paintings, poems, or prose.

But what stands out is that despite this inequality, people still continue to say that human-made art is what they want.

In a study published in 2023, participants were shown a series of images, each randomly labeled as “AI-made” or “human-made.” Participants rated images they thought were created by machines as worse than images they thought were created by a human artist – even if they were actually created by humans.