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How Artists Are Using A.I. and Where They Are Drawing the Line

Gabriel Rico, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Theo Triantafyllidis, Céline Shen and many others are using artificial intelligence as a tool for research, experimentation and intellectual confrontation while still questioning its limits.

Even as A.I.’s integration into daily life continues, visual artists remain divided over a central question: is its use legitimate in artistic creation? Other creative sectors—including video production, graphic design, photo editing, fashion design, architecture and product design—have grown increasingly open to integrating A.I. into workflows. In most cases, artificial intelligence serves as an assistant: facilitating brainstorming, generating alternatives, organizing information or streamlining the more tedious technical aspects of the creative process. The emerging consensus, even in the visual arts, seems to be that A.I. can be a valuable tool, but should never generate the final product. The real debate, then, is not over whether artists and creatives should use A.I., but over what kinds of use are legitimate.

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A.I.-generated images and videos, for now, tend to be easily recognizable and attract plenty of backlash, particularly in creative communities, even as a broad cross-section of the public appears increasingly willing to accept them (or progressively more disinterested in making a distinction). When Coca-Cola released its first A.I.-generated Christmas advertisement in 2024, many viewers criticized it as soulless and emotionally hollow. The company used artificial intelligence again in 2025, and again faced a wave of criticism. By then, however, audiences had become more accustomed to A.I.-generated content’s presence in digital advertising. Meanwhile, concerns about copyright and authorship infringement, the erosion of creativity, skills and freedom, and job-market disruption remain insurmountable without national or international policies that protect creators and users.

In the art world, adoption of A.I. has been considerably slower. Only recently have we begun to see meaningful integrations, primarily on the administrative side, in software and platforms designed to streamline gallery operations, studio management and collection database administration. As a recent First Thursday survey revealed, most galleries still lack formal policies governing A.I., and employees are often dealing with sensitive information using personal accounts.

The broader discussions around artificial intelligence and culture are also evolving. UNESCO’s latest report on A.I. use, for instance, acknowledged it as a form of collective intelligence shaped by decades of digitally mediated social interaction and cultural production. Beyond the necessary ethical and ecological concerns raised by the document, if these systems can also be understood as repositories of the “creative commons”—humanity’s shared cultural record—then creators may be able to engage with them as tools for research, dialogue and critical confrontation, situating their practices within the history of cultural expression.

A recent essay in Aeon by critic and philosopher Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, considers similar questions from the perspective of writing and the humanities. Addressing what he describes as widespread “creative resistance” to A.I., Puchner argues that these systems should primarily be understood as tools. He describes A.I. as a kind of “shared language model,” trained on knowledge encoded in language itself. Language, after all, is one of humanity’s earliest technologies, fundamentally reshaping how we think and communicate. Today, Puchner suggests, we share that linguistic space with machines that can expand our expressive, creative and intellectual capacities. He, like many educators across the humanities, is exploring ways to integrate A.I. into teaching and argues that developing what he calls “meta-AI” skills—the ability to use evolving tools critically and effectively—is essential not only for the future workplace but also for enhancing writing and thinking. Used as “sparring partners,” A.I. systems can inspire students to sharpen arguments, responding to counterarguments and conflicting evidence, while also serving as research assistants or collaborators in testing structures and approaches.

Among artists, particularly those working in traditional media, resistance to A.I. remains more pronounced. Yet a growing number have begun exploring artificial intelligence not as a replacement for artistic labor, but as a tool for brainstorming, research and creative confrontation during the image-making process, whether the final work is a painting, sculpture or installation.

Clearly, there is still much to unpack, demystify and legitimize when considering A.I. as a means of testing intuitions, exploring unexpected associations, situating ideas within broader currents of art history or tapping into something closer to a collective visual subconscious. To better understand where artists stand at this moment, Observer spoke with several about how they are—or are not—integrating A.I. into studio management and creative processes, and what that reveals about the evolving relationship between artistic creation and machine intelligence.

Mexican artist Gabriel Rico has long engaged with technology and, more broadly, different systems of knowledge and language within an ecological and evolutionary framework. For him, technology is tied to our ability to develop new ways of thinking, solving problems and interacting with the world, drawing on knowledge accumulated by communities over time. “I think technology is deeply related to the creation of tools. One question that often comes to mind is: which came first in human history—technology or the tool? For me, the two are inseparable,” he said. “The development of a new tool creates new technologies, and technologies create new ways to express ourselves, think and create. It’s a chain reaction.”

Yet Rico’s work remains primarily physical (installation, embroideries). When he engages with the digital space, he considers himself not a digital artist but a sculptor who uses technology as one tool among many. He began experimenting with augmented reality around 2018, initially using it to add layers of meaning rather than replace physical objects. He first adopted A.I. for practical tasks before incorporating it into his studio practice to generate renders and models, visualize ideas and develop new works.

“Since drawing has never been one of my strengths, A.I. became a useful way to visualize ideas,” he admitted. “Later, I began using A.I. more creatively, as a catalyst to transform existing works.” Most recently, artificial intelligence has become a creative accelerator, helping him transform existing projects and push imagery beyond the limits of physical perception. In the recent video Future People Will Maintain Plutonium Here (2024), which documents the decomposition of a sausage through more than 3,100 time-lapse frames captured in the studio over 20 days, A.I. let Rico zoom into impossible scales, generating an otherwise unattainable look into the lively bacterial ecosystem unfolding inside the skeleton, beyond the anthropocentric view.

According to Rico, new technologies have always appeared threatening at first, but as tools evolve, they become further integrated into everyday life and normalized. He sees artificial intelligence as the peak of technological evolution so far. “A.I. didn’t come from nowhere—it emerged from humanity itself. That’s why interacting with it feels so natural. It’s like entering a library where you no longer need to search shelf by shelf. You can ask a question and immediately access an enormous body of knowledge,” he said, adding that technology, like fire, can be used in many ways. Fire can cook food, keep us warm or create beauty. “A.I. is similar. We are still asking ourselves fundamental questions about it—how dangerous it might be, why we should use it and how it will change society—but I see it as part of a broader human evolution.”

He didn’t totally discount A.I.’s potentially negative impact on creative labor, but also doesn’t believe it will replace the material aspects of artistic production. “We simply need to understand it intelligently,” he argued. “A.I. is a powerful extension of our perception, but it will never replace physical reality, which remains the source of everything. What A.I. can do is help us communicate more effectively, overcome barriers such as language and connect people in new ways.” He feels artists should explore its potential as a studio assistant capable of handling administrative work, generating visual proposals and supporting experimentation.

Several other artists confirmed that they have begun using A.I.—mostly for organizational and administrative tasks or to visualize works in exhibition. “I don’t use A.I. in my practice, but just last week I generated an image of what a brick wall would look like in a gallery to help me visualize and conceive the exhibition design,” Melissa Joseph, whose tactile practice transforms vernacular family photographs into labor-intensive felt compositions, told Observer. “I don’t use A.I. directly in the creative process of my paintings,” echoed Alejandro Piñero Bello, a Cuban-born, Miami-based painter from the PACE roster known for lush, surreal tropical landscapes. He has, however, begun using it in an organizational capacity. “I use it to........

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