Artificial Intelligence as a Co-pilot in the Creative Process of Artists

The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is profoundly reshap-ing the field of visual arts, sparking debates about creativity, authorship, and au-dience perception. This paper synthesizes interdisciplinary insights to articulate the essential contribution of AI to contemporary artistic practice. Moving beyond polarized narratives of celebration or rejection, it conceptualizes AI not as a re-placement for human creativity but as a co-pilot in the creative process. Three key themes emerge: (1) the ontology of AI-Generated Art, which redefines the boundaries of what is considered art; (2) the debates around authorship, original-ity, and intentionality, which challenge traditional notions of artistic agency; and (3) audience perception, which reveals cognitive biases and skepticism toward AI Art. By drawing a historical parallel to the contested legitimacy of photog-raphy in the 19th century, the study contextualizes contemporary doubts sur-rounding AI art as part of broader cultural negotiations around new media. The paper argues that AI expands modalities of creativity, enabling hybrid forms of artistic expression while catalyzing cultural debates on authenticity. The contri-bution is both theoretical— proposing creativity as a distributed human–machine process—and practical—highlighting implications for artists, institutions, and knowledge-intensive domains navigating human–AI collaboration.