CAN AI BE ART?
ANTIDOTE.PSD
Antidote.psd is a 3D designer and visual artist working across mediums including typographic design, mirror engraving, and AI-assisted image creation. In this essay, he writes about the question he can’t quite settle: can AI be art? He moves from skepticism to immersion, tracing how tools become mediums, and how context and intention might be what turns output into art.
When I was first asked this question, I had a quick and simple answer. Then, when asked again, it went the other way. Now I’m here, unsure how I feel and wondering: who am I to decide?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this question over the last week or so, and I continually find my decision swayed by different things. The other night, I was watching Good Will Hunting, and that iconic scene where Robin Williams is talking to Matt Damon came on. They’re in one of their first therapy sessions, discussing how Sean (Robin Williams) could ask Will (Matt Damon) anything and he’d be able to recite all kinds of facts and stories that he’s memorised from the books he’s read—but that’s all he can do. He’s never lived it. Never experienced any of it firsthand. It’s just a recital.
This got me thinking about AI and how it gives you access to everything on the internet, everything it’s been trained on, referencing it all and giving it back to you in whatever style best suits your prompt. But does that make it art? It feels like it’s just reproduction. There’s no critical thinking involved, no understanding of the situation it’s in, or of who or what it’s creating for.
This thought led me down a series of rabbit holes: What is art? What can be considered art? Who gets to decide?
I recently read Poor Artists by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente (a.k.a. The White Pube), a creative nonfiction book about a character’s exploration of the art world. The main character, Quest, talks about the context that determines what gets to be called art. For example, your child’s painting isn’t inherently art just because it’s honest or untrained. Without context, it’s mark-making—non-intentional artistic practice—becoming meaningful only to those who give it meaning afterward.
There’s the classic line of “my kid could do that” when looking at abstract artworks. But this is where the differentiation lies. The abstract artist who has trained and developed their style to create a piece with meaning and thought—even if unconsciously—has added a layer to the painting that could not exist in the work of the child. That is what transitions paint on a canvas into a work of art.
Like many people, when I first saw AI-generated images, I agreed they looked cool, but I wouldn’t really have called them “art.” The constant stream of talking animals and over-produced images feels saturated and lacking in merit or meaning. The majority of what I see shared on social media clogs up the feed and stops “real” work from being seen.
But what is “real” work? Why do I get to decide? As someone making AI pieces myself, why would mine be different? I could argue that they’re created not just to look cool, but that they reflect thought-out ideas and projects. They’re final pieces, adapted and worked into a bigger picture—like my client work—assets used to improve my design process and help my clients achieve their desired aesthetic and goals.
So, is AI art, or just a functional tool?
I’m still not sure. But it does pose another question: who am I to talk? Plenty of people could argue whether my 3D work is art or just design—an age-old debate amongst creatives themselves, whether they go by the title of artists or designers. For now, I’ve landed on Visual Artist / Designer. I use everything I can to create the work I want to make, and I resist the idea of being defined by any one medium, AI included. Everything is a tool that aids in the creation of work.
Objectively, AI is a tool with significant potential. It has helped me in both my professional and personal work over the past year. That said, it’s never been my whole output. It can be great for developing a texture that I go on to use in Blender, creating roughness maps that otherwise would take an age, or creating the intricate images described by clients that I wouldn’t be able to reproduce in 3D within the project’s deadlines. That image, however, is still just an image unless used correctly.
The first time I really saw merit in AI-generated art was when I got to see the first volume of Spells, created by Max Kuwertz and RAM Agency. I felt like I’d been shown a completely new medium, nothing like the AI art I was used to. When I finally got my own copy, I marked nearly every other page. The textures and materials fascinated me—things I’d dreamt of creating but wouldn’t have known where to start.
I went to see the launch of Spells: Volume 2 Process at Forward Festival, Berlin, and had the chance to hear Max talk about the book and the reasons for creating it. One thing he said was that a 600-page PDF of those same images wouldn’t carry the same weight as the printed book. For some reason, the tangibility balanced out the fact that it was created using AI. It gave it the weight it needed to be called art.
In early 2025, I was invited to contribute to the second edition of Spells: Volume 2 Process. It was the first time I created “artworks” made from a single prompt—no editing in post, no integrating them into other works. I spent weeks deciding what to make, not sure I was even capable of creating something worth including. But this was the moment I stopped treating AI as a separate category and began thinking of it as an extension of the tools in my own toolbox. I approached the collection the same way I would an oil painting, a clay sculpture, or a 3D abstract typographic piece—focusing on material, light, and colour. I created three works I am genuinely happy to call artworks.
Right now we’re in a strange transitional period. AI is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. People who have trained their entire lives to create without this new tool are pissed. It reminds me of what I’ve been told about the emergence of photography: portrait and landscape painters were left frustrated, calling it cheating, machine-made, and not art. Now, photography exists in its own right as a globally recognised art form. It just took time for people to make up their minds, for enough separation between the two to exist.
We are entering an exciting period of time in which people have access to such a wide variety of tools. Artists exist in so many ways, blending all kinds of mediums. AI is just the latest addition to this toolbox. With a bit more time, things will calm once again and AI will carve out its own section of the art world.