AI can only replace boring art

Yesterday I saw a TikTok video by artist and content creator Doug Weaver that really caught my attention. Here’s part of what he said:

“AI is boring, and I think that makes it a really good tool for us to identify what parts of our lives have become boring and obsolete and disconnected from humanity… But now we’re all getting concerned that AI is starting to replace artists and replace musicians. Does that mean that our art and our music have become boring and disconnected from humanity?

If you only ever see art on a screen, then AI can replace it like that [snaps fingers]. There is color and texture and scale that you cannot see…

Maybe we’ve already destroyed the things that make us human, and that is why it is so easy for AI to replace us… everything that we do should be done in community. Art and craft should be done in community. Music should be part of your community…

If AI can replace everything, it means that we have taken humanity out of everything already and AI is just a mirror showing us how disconnected we are.”

Weaver’s point stuck with me: AI can only replace art that’s already disconnected from human life.

Later that day, his message was made clear in my own world. I was working in my home office on detailed work for my fall online course—checking dates, rooting out errors and fixing confusing instructions—I had a Focus playlist going in the background. That lo-fi music helps keep me on task and delays my inevitable phone-checking.

My husband popped his head in: “What are you on hold for?”

To him, my focus music sounded like customer service hold music. And honestly, he wasn’t wrong. It was designed to be boring—to take up just enough mental space without demanding attention.

Not All Art Is Meant to Command Attention

Different art serves different purposes, and it always has. Piano players for background music at restaurants or a juke box at a bar. Hotel hallways display framed prints that no one stops to study. Some art is meant to be decorative—to create atmosphere, not to provoke deep reflection.

That’s the kind of art AI can replace. It can generate background music, hotel art, and stock images all day long. It can do “decor.”

But AI can’t replace art that’s rooted in a human touch, in real-world creation, in connection and community.

Engagement Is the Real Safeguard

For that art to thrive, people have to care enough to engage with it—by showing up, paying for it, talking about it, and making it part of their lives.

If we treat all art like background noise, AI will gladly take over. If we want human-made art with original vision and skill to endure, we have to give it our time, our attention, and our resources.

Because as we’re already seeing in the shrinking nonprofit arts sector: what doesn’t get valued just slips away.