The artwork is changing and nobody knows where the boundary ends
Artificial intelligence, digital creation and a rapidly evolving art market are forcing museums, collectors and artists to reconsider what makes an artwork original, who owns it and where human creativity begins.
FOSTER! NEWS | CULTURE
18 SEPTEMBER 2026
THE ARTWORK IS NO LONGER JUST AN OBJECT
For centuries, the art world was built around something remarkably physical.
A painting had a surface. A sculpture occupied a space. A drawing carried the marks of a hand. A photograph existed as a physical negative or print.
Today, an artwork can be generated by software, exist entirely on a screen, change according to an algorithm or be produced through a collaboration between a human artist and an artificial intelligence system.
The technology has changed faster than the institutions responsible for defining what art is.
And the debate is no longer theoretical.
It is already affecting galleries, museums, collectors, auction houses and artists.
THE ART MARKET HAS RETURNED TO GROWTH
The global art market generated an estimated US$59.6 billion in sales in 2025, according to the 2026 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.
That represented a 4% increase compared with 2024, after two consecutive years of declining sales.
Public auction sales increased by 9%, while dealer sales rose by 2%.
But the recovery was uneven.
The three largest markets — the United States, United Kingdom and China — represented 76% of global sales by value.
The numbers show something important.
The traditional art market has not disappeared.
It is adapting.
THE STRANGE PARADOX OF DIGITAL ART
The pandemic appeared to accelerate the digitalisation of the art market.
Online sales reached extraordinary levels as galleries closed and physical fairs disappeared.
But the transformation did not continue indefinitely.
In 2025, online sales fell to US$9.2 billion, representing about 15% of the global market, their lowest share since 2019.
The highest-value transactions moved back towards physical spaces.
Collectors wanted to see the work.
They wanted to meet artists.
They wanted galleries, exhibitions, fairs and the social experience surrounding art.
Technology changed the market.
But it did not eliminate the physical experience.
THEN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHANGED THE QUESTION
Artificial intelligence introduces a different problem.
A camera records something.
A brush leaves a mark.
A sculptor physically transforms material.
But what happens when an artist describes an image to a machine and the machine produces thousands of visual possibilities in seconds?
Where exactly is the artwork?
In the prompt?
In the selection?
In the editing?
In the model?
Or in the final image?
There is no universally accepted answer.
And that uncertainty is becoming one of the defining cultural questions of the digital age.
WHO IS THE ARTIST?
This is where the debate becomes more complicated.
An AI-generated image can involve a human artist, a software system, training data, algorithms and a process of selection and editing.
The machine does not fit comfortably into the traditional definition of an artist.
But neither does the human creator necessarily fit the old definition of a painter, photographer or sculptor.
The result is forcing the art world to reconsider the relationship between intention, authorship and creation.
The question is not simply whether AI can make an image.
It is whether creating an image is the same thing as creating art.
COPYRIGHT HAS BECOME PART OF THE ART DEBATE
The technological question has quickly become a legal one.
AI systems can generate images that resemble particular artistic styles.
That raises difficult questions about training data, intellectual property, attribution and consent.
Artists want to know how their work is being used.
Technology companies argue about how models learn from enormous quantities of publicly available material.
Platforms are developing new systems for identifying, labelling and regulating synthetic content.
The legal framework is struggling to keep pace with the technology.
MUSEUMS ARE ENTERING A NEW TERRITORY
Museums are not standing outside this transformation.
Major institutions increasingly use digital technologies to expand exhibitions, create immersive environments, preserve cultural heritage and reach audiences beyond their physical buildings.
Art Basel's 2026 edition brought together 290 galleries from 43 countries and territories, attracting around 90,000 visitors and representatives from more than 270 museums and foundations.
The message is revealing.
Even in an increasingly digital culture, the physical art ecosystem remains enormously important.
But museums are also becoming laboratories for new forms of experience.
CONTEMPORARY ART IS NOT DISAPPEARING
There is another important detail hidden beneath the headlines about technological disruption.
Contemporary art remains a major part of the international market.
In 2025, contemporary art auction sales were approximately US$1.4 billion, broadly stable compared with the previous year. Postwar and Contemporary art together represented the largest sector of the fine-art auction market by value.
The market therefore has not simply moved from paintings to pixels.
Instead, the definition of what can become a valuable cultural object is expanding.
THE HUMAN HAND STILL MATTERS
There is a reason collectors continue to visit studios.
There is a reason museums continue to exhibit physical objects.
There is a reason people stand in front of paintings that were created centuries ago.
Art is not only an image.
It can be material, historical, geographical and human.
A painting carries evidence of decisions made by a person.
A sculpture carries the physical consequences of its creation.
A historical object connects the present with another time.
Technology can reproduce appearance.
It does not automatically reproduce meaning.
THE NEW ART WORLD WILL PROBABLY CONTAIN BOTH
The most interesting future may not be a battle between traditional art and artificial intelligence.
It may be a combination of both.
Artists will use digital tools.
Painters will work with algorithms.
Museums will combine physical objects with immersive technologies.
Photographers will manipulate images with AI.
Sculptors will use robotics and digital manufacturing.
Collectors will increasingly encounter works that exist simultaneously in physical and digital forms.
The boundary will become less obvious.
THE ART MARKET IS ALSO BECOMING MORE GLOBAL
The concentration of the market remains significant.
The US, UK and China accounted for three-quarters of global sales in 2025.
But the broader ecosystem is much larger.
Artists, galleries, collectors, museums and fairs increasingly operate across continents.
Art Basel's 2026 Basel edition attracted visitors from 103 countries, with participation from Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
The art world is therefore becoming simultaneously more concentrated economically and more international culturally.
That contradiction may define its next phase.
THE QUESTION OF VALUE
The most difficult question may ultimately have nothing to do with technology.
It is value.
Why is one work worth £500 while another is worth £50 million?
The answer has never been purely aesthetic.
It can involve reputation, scarcity, provenance, historical importance, cultural influence, institutional recognition and the perception of future significance.
AI does not eliminate this system.
It makes the system more complicated.
If millions of images can be generated instantly, scarcity becomes harder to define.
And if scarcity changes, the meaning of value changes with it.
ART IS ENTERING A NEW DEFINITION OF ORIGINALITY
For centuries, originality was closely associated with the unique object.
A unique painting.
A unique sculpture.
A unique photograph.
The digital age has already weakened that assumption.
Artificial intelligence could push it even further.
The next generation of artists may not be defined by whether they use technology.
They may be defined by how they use it.
The tool is changing.
The question of creativity remains.
FOSTER! ANALYSES
The art world is not being replaced by technology.
It is being forced to define itself again.
The global market has returned to growth, physical galleries and fairs remain powerful, museums continue to attract international audiences and collectors still value the experience of encountering art in person.
At the same time, artificial intelligence has introduced a new category of questions that previous generations of artists never had to confront.
Who created the work?
Who owns it?
Who should receive credit?
What makes it original?
And perhaps the deepest question of all:
If a machine can produce an image, what makes the human act of creating art valuable?
The answer may not be found in the technology.
It may be found in the intention behind it.
Because throughout history, art has never been simply about producing something that looks beautiful.
It has been about human beings trying to say something about the world.
And that part has not changed.
FOSTER! NEWS
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