Both artist and audience are hungry for brutalism
With the recent evolution of generative AI into image and video content, industry circles have become concerned about the future of art as a human-centric industry. And rightly so – when billionaires claim your industry is soon to be mainly at the behest of robots, ears naturally perk up. Except, its current cultural relevance and value to the consumer rely almost entirely on the hype of its creators and investors, which isn't very much. What was originally a tool for graphic designers has overextended itself in an attempt to become a signalled value proposition. It actually has the opposite intended effect of audience dominance - it is and will continue to drive up the value of much of the affordable art world.
Identifiable AI content is tacky and immediately turns off the viewer from emotionally engaging with its subject, particularly when said viewer is intended to translate into a consumer. Expecting viewers to hand over funds in exchange for a computer-generated advertisement is a sure fire way to ensure that the viewer keeps their money in their pocket. Trust is forfeited in the purely digital proposition of AI media. For a consumer to purchase, they need to trust that someone is behind the product, whether it's an artwork or an everyday material product, earnestly giving them something worth their time. Amongst the frantic angst of the technification of creation, we forget that the value of art has always been given precisely because of its scarcity value as an authentic and special object.
In 2021, the NFT (non-fungible token) gained astronomic value as an investment. A year later, NFTs lost almost all of their value. Between May 2022 and July of the same year, the average price of NFTs fell 92% with trading volume decreasing the same amount. 1 The concept of the NFT was that it would ensure digital scarcity by selling the rights to digital art in an infinitely copyable medium —a promise that quickly proved illusory. The problem lay in the fact that scarcity without cultural capital, authenticity and aura is valueless to the consumer. It is then merely a scarce product. Beyond the hype bubble generated by tech fiends, the digital token had no fundamental value.
The problem with the overvaluation of technological innovation under a purely capitalist view is that it negates the psychological and biological imperative for humans to access both the scarce and authentic. The NFT proved this by producing scarcity without authenticity. Now, like with many extremes, the looming presence of the artificially created art is actually driving people towards more radically human art.
Whilst the high-end art market has contracted significantly (between $10 and $100 million), 2 the under $10 million market rose 17% early this year. 3 Younger generations – Millennials and Gen Z – currently represent a third of all bidders at fine art auctions, despite many predicting that AI-driven art and creative work would saturate the culture of digital natives. 4
When investors push for change and consumption of a product, the tension that exists between the supply of the product and the lack of demand from consumers creates mutual wariness. Like a dog sniffing a visitor on its territory, the consumer questions the value of this product in their life, needing to be convinced of its trustworthiness to welcome it into their circle of daily familiarity. Without trust, the value of the investment decreases, and we are once again reminded of the consumer's role in dictating the market.
Beyond the importance of trust, multiple theories exist to explain the lack of a value proposition in AI-generated art, promising a relative increase in demand for human-led creativity. First, the commodity theory. Most commodities increase in economic and psychological value when limited in availability due to scarcity. However, the value of art to the human psyche is even more complex than this one psychological principle.
In 1936, philosopher Walter Benjamin produced the theory that art is unique through its aura (unique composition in a time and space by an individual). By rapidly reproducing 'art' or what could be considered art to a point where anyone with an internet connection can ask for it through the services of AI, AI art (videos, images, graphics, etc), therefore, is granted no aura value for it is detached from any historical or identity content. It's true that today, younger generations, such as Millennials and Gen Z, conditioned to mass-reproduced imagery, are shifting their desire towards art with aura. Mindless production (creation by an inanimate object and soulless mechanism) of art, comparatively, holds little to no cultural capital or aura.
Under Pierre Bourdieu's 1984 Psychological mechanism 'Cultural Capital Theory', art's value is held in its role as cultural capital – embodying the possession of a cultural good and then formalised through its selling. Its value, under this theory, is in the process of creation and receiving between individuals. We as individuals assign value based on this proposition in our psychological reasoning. Without it, art is cheap to us and, therefore, holds no value in the human market, where supply relies on demand. In other words, what good is a Sora (OpenAI's voice, image, and video generator) generated image of a sketch when I can commission one from an up-and-coming, well-trained artist in South London? The answer – little to none.
Simultaneously with the development of AI content, a brutalist intersubjective aesthetic is defining the current cultural zeitgeist. Artists are creating from an intimate place of unpolished rawness. It's a collective claw at the truth of the human condition, whilst those who submit to the capitalist machine promise its blind value. Particularly enthralling progenies of such brutality have emerged within the past few months. The celebration of reinvented classical music by Rosalía in her new album 'LUX' and Charli XCX's first single, "The House," off her soundtrack album to Emerald Fennell's promisingly ferociously gothic film adaptation of Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights', sonically represents this immersive sentiment. Once pointed out, it's hard to find a human-born artistic or cultural moment right now that isn't in tension with the new 'promise' of technified creation. From Apple TV+'s gripping new series 'Pluribus', debuting with a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, David Szalay's novel 'Flesh', or Yorgos Lanthimos' film 'Bugonia', the pieces breathing amongst the mainstream organism are also being intellectually praised for their emanation of the brutal truth of the human experience.
In a sea of production, authenticity feels most at home in our shared identity – an individual's sense of self, frightened of being lost amidst this increasingly artificial landscape. So now, one curates their online experience with authenticity. With representations of the brutal reality of existing amidst technological innovation at the helm of perceived collective needs, we lean on emotionally relevant cultural expressions. This tension, which supports similar artistic creation, is making being online not only exciting but finally a cathartic extension of actual reality for young digital natives. The generation defining the zeitgeist, the one whose market was thought to be the home for AI imagery production, is the one most rejecting it, at least in terms of having it define our cultural moment.
References
1. "The NFT Market Crash: The Complete Guide." Supra, https://supra.com/academy/nft-market-crash/
2. "Spring 2025 Art Market Update: Key Trends and Analysis." Bank of America Private Bank, https://www.pbig.ml.com/articles/art-market-spring-update.html
3. "Fall 2025 Art Market Update: Analyzing Current Trends." Bank of America Private Bank, https://www.pbig.ml.com/articles/art-market-fall-update.html
4. "Global Art Market Reports Reveal 5 Critical Trends Reshaping the Art Market for 2025." Maddox Gallery, https://maddoxgallery.com/news/426-global-art-market-reports-reveal-5-critical-trends-reshaping-the-art-market-in-2025/