People keep asking the same question over and over: Is AI art replacing real art? You see it on Reddit threads, Twitter timelines, group chats. It comes not from curiosity, but fear. And like most fears, it oversimplifies.

AI-generated art isn’t replacing real art. It’s replacing access to making art. That’s a crucial distinction.

Real art comes from a place inside. It has no shortcut. It comes after silence, struggle, attention. It’s not about getting a result fast. It’s about what you uncover along the way.

But most people aren’t trying to make real art. They’re trying to make something. They want to express themselves, quickly, easily. They’re not trying to be Van Gogh. They’re trying to not be invisible.

So when tools like AI come along and make expression easier, people use them. And suddenly we have an internet full of Ghibli-fied portraits, hyperrealistic dreamscapes, and gods with puppy eyes. That isn’t a problem. It’s a mirror.

It’s showing us how much people wanted to make art but couldn’t. Because they lacked the skill, or the time, or the tools.

I know this because I hesitated too. I didn’t Ghibli-fy my family photo for weeks. It felt wrong, like taking something sacred and running it through a Instagram filter. But eventually I did it. My wife looked at it and said, “Our son is beautiful—in this picture, he looks weird.”

That single sentence captured the whole tension. The internet said it was cute. My wife, who knows the real child, said it was off. Because it was.

Art isn’t about matching a vibe. It’s about being seen, fully. And no filter can do that.

But I don’t think artists should be afraid. Not the real ones. Because what they’re doing isn’t threatened. AI can generate infinite versions of a forest in Ghibli style. But it can’t pause, like Miyazaki does, and let silence speak.

It can’t show you the ache in Kiki’s voice when she says, "I think something’s wrong with me."

It can’t make you sit still after the credits of Spirited Away roll, unsure of what you’re feeling, only that you’ve felt something true.

AI is a tool. And like every new tool before it, it gets judged unfairly. Photography was called mechanical. Impressionism was called unfinished. Pop art was called commercial.

But every tool becomes art when people use it with intent.

The problem isn’t that people are making too much AI art. The problem is that most of it is being made without any soul.

If you’ve painted, drawn, written, or coded anything by hand, you know the difference. There’s something in your mistakes, your decisions, your uncertainty, that makes the thing yours. When AI gives you something perfect, you might admire it, but you don’t feel proud of it. It’s not yours in the same way.

That’s the core distinction.

AI art isn’t replacing real art. But it’s challenging our definition of what counts as making something.

And that might be a good thing. Because it forces us to confront something uncomfortable:

Do you want to be creative, or do you want to feel like you made something?

Real art will always exist. It’s not going away. But maybe the way we define participation is expanding. Maybe the people who couldn’t paint before will now discover what they want to say. Maybe they’ll get better at it. Maybe they’ll never stop.

That’s not the end of art. That’s what happens when tools become language.

PS: My partner Gautam Sawhney and I built dreamyfilter.com. The irony isn’t lost on me—I just spent a thousand words talking about how AI art lacks soul, and here I am offering a tool that dreamy-fies your face in a few minutes.

But that’s kind of the point. Dreamyfilter isn’t pretending to be real art. It’s just a shortcut to a feeling—the same one I had when I ran a family photo through it and saw it come back soft, dreamy, and a little uncanny. It wasn’t “true,” but it was sweet. It let me see something familiar in a new way.

It’s not for masterpieces. It’s just a low-barrier glimpse into what could be. But sometimes, that’s enough to spark curiosity. Maybe even enough to make someone pick up a pencil one day.