Art, originality and the AI question

When I asked Dominican painter Angie whether she used AI in her work, her answer was immediate: “No. Nada. No.” Our conversation moved from that answer to a harder question: what happens when someone can copy an artist’s work without asking?

Angie did not claim that copying was impossible. She spoke about what she could control, the people who value an original, and her determination to keep making art.

A buyer who wants the original

“I really like to think that if you have taste, you would like to have an original, not an AI,” Angie said. She acknowledged that some people would not be able to tell the difference. For someone interested in her work, she hoped the next step would be to investigate who made it.

“I just hope that the people that like my work will really like try to investigate, which are the ones that I really made.”

That is her hope for her audience, rather than a promise that every buyer will recognise a copy. The distinction matters: she knows the risk exists, but she does not want that risk to decide whether she continues painting.

What she can and cannot control

Angie described the possibility of her work being fed into an AI system. Her response was personal: she cannot control everything that might happen to it.

“If it happens, I will find a way to not, not, not stop doing my things,” she said. Later, she asked: “Can I fight Elon Musk? Me?”

She also said that complaining was important. Her answer was not an instruction for other artists to stay silent. She was explaining her own limits: she feels tired, and does not want her whole existence to become a constant performance of resistance.

The work she would give a machine

“You could make a robot that picks up trash on the on the sea,” Angie said, contrasting that with a machine doing a writer’s work. The example expressed where she would like technological effort to go. It was not a claim about a particular robot or programme.

For her own practice, she said: “The most beautiful thing about my work is I don’t need AI.” Her discussion of visual references was less clear in the transcript, so I have not turned it into a claim about how she uses or would use generated pictures.

Keep looking for the person behind the work

What stays with me is Angie’s wish that people look closely enough to find the work she actually made. A title, a familiar style or a convincing image is not the whole story of an artwork. In this conversation, her answer was to keep making her own work and to hope her audience would care about its origin.

This article is based on our recorded interview. Angie’s views about AI are presented as her views; they are not a prediction about the art market.

Explore more conversations with artists and makers in our original documentary films.