AI Art: IGCSE Insert October/November 2025

 Read both texts and then answer Question 1 on the question paper.

Text A: AI art

This text discusses the use of AI (artificial intelligence) such as robots to make art.

‘Woman reading book, under a night sky, dreamy atmosphere,’ I type in. Almost instantly, 

an image is returned to me showing what I’ve described. Welcome to the world of AI image 

generation, where you can create anything you’d care to imagine with a carefully worded prompt, 

even if in reality you can’t draw more than stick figures. Want a song that sounds like it was 

written by your favourite musician, a romantic poem, or perhaps a script for a movie? AI can do 

all that too.

Of course, digital art in various forms has been around for years. The computer is a powerful 

tool for human artists, so powerful that some traditional artists consider it cheating. A computer 

provides a clean, organised workspace with the freedom to correct mistakes. Look at beautiful 

digital art, compare it with the things you draw with a pencil, and you can feel astonished and 

inadequate. If only you too could afford expensive computer software!

Traditional art isn’t easy. It takes time to develop techniques and talent. Creating an image in 

paint or clay that people will recognise and react to in a certain way is a complicated process. 

Critics don’t accept that it’s the same with digital art. They dispute that drawing a line on paper is 

no different from drawing with a stylus pen or that 3D printing a sculpture is just one way to give 

form to artistic imagination. Now to add to their fury, AI art is taking things a step further away 

from the artists and seems to be everywhere.

But is it art, and will it put human artists out of a job?

The question ‘What is art?’ is not a new one, though most experts argue that art should reflect 

and interpret the world around us.

The fear is that AI will mean the end of human artists, or at least the end to paying them. 

Musicians, writers and artists continue to share concerns about the fairness of AI generators, 

which produce images, music and text, copying their styles and subjects. They argue that AI 

machines learn from thousands of images created by real painters and this means that AI art is 

nothing more sophisticated than a giant ‘copy and paste’, devaluing the hard work of the original 

artists. But should art be about reward for effort? A Picasso painting might have taken less time 

to complete than a house painter takes to re-do your kitchen, but that does not make your kitchen 

a masterpiece.

It may seem alarming, but isn’t the AI engine just that: an engine, a tool? It makes no creative 

judgements. Someone must guide the AI, decide what changes to make, and when to stop. 

Think of it like this: historically, the introduction of the camera erased the need to have a portrait 

or landscape painting. If you wanted a realistic image, you could just take a photo.

Photography had a vast impact, just as AI is starting to, but it did not spell the end of art – instead, 

it opened new opportunities. Photography allowed for new ways to express artistic intent. Now 

the world has photographers, filmmakers, and a host of other happy creative artistic people all 

earning money.

It is possible that AI engines too will be an incredibly rich source of inspiration in ways yet to 

be discovered. Far from shutting down artistic expression, they allow anyone, with or without 

drawing or painting skills, to imagine new world