The Biggest Crisis Facing Artists in the AI Era Isn't AI — It's Losing Their Audience

Artists are finding it increasingly difficult to survive. This is no longer a problem facing any single country. It has become a global crisis in the art ecosystem.

The fundamental problem is a serious imbalance between supply and demand.

On one hand, wealth, resources, and attention in the art market continue to concentrate at the very top.

On the other hand, art schools keep expanding, producing more and more artists and an overwhelming supply of artwork.

More importantly, after decades of commercialization and conceptualization, much of the contemporary art world has gradually lost its ability to connect with ordinary people.

More and more people are beginning to ask:

"What does art have to do with me?"

I believe this is the most dangerous warning sign for the entire art ecosystem.

Because a truly healthy art ecosystem should never serve only those at the top.

Recently, I've been coming across two very different kinds of videos.

In one, artists talk to themselves about how art was never meant to serve the general public.

In the other, artists go into shopping malls, streets, and other public spaces, trying to introduce and sell their artwork to ordinary people, almost as if they were asking for charity.

The first group may appear sophisticated and intellectually superior. The second may appear humble, or even a little desperate.

But personally, I have much greater respect for the second group.

I admire their effort and determination. By setting aside their pride and reaching out to ordinary people, they are actually doing something to improve the art ecosystem.

Like any other industry, art has different levels, from the most accessible to the most sophisticated.

There is nothing wrong with artistic excellence or intellectual ambition. But if an entire industry becomes disconnected from the general public, it will eventually lose the very foundation that sustains it.

And this brings me to something I've been thinking about a great deal recently.

During the industrial age, humanity gradually became accustomed to living without art as an essential part of everyday life.

But in the age of AI, I believe people will actually need art more than ever.

Why?

Because as AI becomes increasingly capable of producing images, music, writing, and even sophisticated creative work, technology itself will no longer be the most valuable or scarce resource.

What will become truly precious is our human capacity to feel, our aesthetic sensitivity, our spiritual experiences, and the genuine emotional connections we share with one another.

And these are precisely the areas where art can play an increasingly important role.

So I believe the most urgent task facing the art world today is to rebuild the relationship between art and the general public.

We need to bring art back into everyday life, back into our homes, and back into people's hearts.

Only by rebuilding this connection can we begin to create a healthier and more sustainable art ecosystem.

And more importantly, art can help us rediscover and strengthen the value of being human in the age of artificial intelligence.

Instead of entering into a brutal competition with AI, we should focus on developing the very qualities that make us human.

The future of art is not about competing with AI. It is about making human experience more meaningful.