AI art is making waves in the global art market, with significant sales and growing interest from collectors. While some see it as a new creative frontier, others question its authenticity and value compared to human-made art. The debate centers on authorship and whether machines can replicate the human experience that defines art. India remains cautious, prioritizing provenance and originality.
In October 2018, the auction house Christie’s sold Edmond de Belamy , a portrait generated by an algorithm, for $432,500. The work, created by the French collective Obvious, used AI trained on 15,000 art works. That single sale triggered a debate ranging from the philosophical — can a machine make art? — to the commercial — should it be valued alongside a Picasso or a Husain? The auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips have since tested the waters with generative and AI-linked works. The launch of dedicated platforms like Sotheby’s Metaverse shows that digital art has moved beyond novelty into commerce.
Yet collectors are split. These moves signal openness, but not consensus. Observers at the time described the art establishment as “both excited and terrified” — excited by new possibilities, but wary of what it could mean for authorship and value.
Some see these works as speculative curiosities, while others regard them as heralding a new epoch in creativity. The art world is grappling with whether AI can ever build the provenance and legacy that give art its value, or whether it will fade like NFTs.
As more artists integrate AI into their workflows, the boundary between human and machine creativity could blur further.
The numbers underscore the scale of the experiment. Since 2022, the AI art market has been valued at around $674 million, with projections of $1.4 billion by 2027, according to Gitnux, a Bengaluru-based market research firm. An estimated 35% of fine art auctions globally now include AIcreated works, according to US-based market statistics firm Market.us Scoop.
An AI artist, Botto, has pulled in over $5 million through auctions since 2021, with one piece going for as high as $276,000. One of Botto’s creators, German artist and computer programmer Mario Klingemann, was quoted by New York Post as saying, “The recent advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning and data analysis make me confident that in the near future machine artists will be able to create more interesting work than humans.”
For Obvious, the Christie’s sale was less a stunt and more a provocation to rethink art’s definitions. “It was not designed to shock for its own sake, but to move the discourse forward. In 2018, it was indeed a provocation to the art world: who is the artist when you are using AI?” the group told ET.
India, where collectors traditionally prize provenance and masters, is more circumspect. Delhi-based collector and art patron Shalini Passi is cautiously open. The founder of art-design collective MASH, Passi recalls displaying an AI work by lens-based artist Ryan Koopmans in 2023 and says it depends on whether the piece carries “originality and depth” rather than being a derivative of an existing artist’s style.
For Passi, zeitgeist matters: “Just as Husain, Raza, or Picasso created works that reflected and shaped their era, if AIgenerated art captures something relevant to our time, then it deserves to be collected in the same spirit.”
Others aren’t sure. Akshitta Aggarwal, gallery director of Bruno Art Gallery, Delhi, makes it clear she would not exhibit AI art alongside contemporary or traditional works. “The idea behind our gallery is to honour the years of practice, skill and creativity that artists put into their work. AI skips over that deeply human process,” she says.
For her, the absence of lived experience and authorship disqualifies AI from being taken seriously in a curatorial context. Patrons, she adds, buy into the artist’s story as much as the object.
Between these poles lies a more pragmatic view. Vaishnavi Murali, founder of Eikowa Art Gallery, believes the market will ultimately judge AI art the way it has judged every other medium. “AI doesn’t create in a vacuum. There’s always human imagination guiding it — someone deciding, refining, shaping. If an artist uses AI as a tool to push the boundaries of their vision, then the creativity still belongs to them,” he says.
She likens the moment to the early days of photography, when many dismissed it as mechanical, or to the NFT wave, which briefly caught attention but fizzled.
According to private family office-style lifestyle management firm CribLife, curiosity exists. CEO Vijaya Eastwood notes that early on, many thought of it as an investment category because of the headlines. “Today, it feels more like a curious, wait-and-watch space. Nobody I work with says it isn’t art, but they want to see proven value cycles and to know who the credible names are before making significant allocations.”
For artists and curators, the debate cuts deeper than market trends. It strikes at the heart of what art means. Aggarwal insists authorship is inseparable from human struggle, while Murali views AI as a tool that can extend imagination rather than replace it.
Here again, Obvious offers a perspective: “The authorship mainly lies in the intent of the creator: using a tool to produce a visual result. AI is a powerful instrument, not an autonomous artist.”
They stress that authorship is reinforced when artists invent and train their own models.
Some contemporary artists have begun experimenting with AI. Turkish American artist Refik Anadol uses machine learning to transform data sets into immersive installations, while Klingemann treats algorithms like pigments or brushes.
If machines can mimic brushstrokes, colours and even stylistic quirks of a master, does the essence of art lie in its form, or in the humanity that produced it? For Obvious, context matters. “If the intent is to fool people into believing the work is a real Picasso, that’s imitation. If it’s part of a homage or thematic show, it can be valid as such.”
Obvious frames it as part of a larger arc. “AI is a major change in the course of human history… it seems logical that it will have an important impact on art and art history as well,” they say.
Perhaps the answer lies not in whether AI can replace artists, but in the new possibilities it opens. Just as the camera didn’t erase painting but transformed it, AI may create space for new forms that coexist with tradition. The risk, however, is that in an age of automation and speed, depth and struggle, the slow work of becoming an artist may lose ground to instant outputs.
