A lot has happened on the AI front for artists this year. Amid burgeoning AI art auctions and mounting legal cases alleging artwork theft by tech companies – it’s been another year where where AI’s reach into artists’ lives has made big headlines.
For some artists, it will feel like nothing changed this year when it comes to their work and AI. (One could argue slow government action around AI copyright reforms and effective legislation is largely to blame here.)
But as 2025 wraps up, it’s useful to look back on how artists’ work has been influenced by AI at a time when it is having an increasing, albeit largely invisible, sway over our personal, professional and creative lives.
To start the year, ArtsHub made some big AI predictions for the 12 months ahead, choosing four major AI trends most likely to influence the creative industries.
AI and art in 2025 – quick links
January: ArtsHub makes predictions for the year ahead
Our first prediction was that AI would become more expensive.
But 12 months on, the opposite has come true. While business spending on AI has certainly increased this year, the raw costs of producing AI apps have actually come down due to their increased efficiency and ongoing software improvements which make their programs cheaper to run.
Our second prediction was that Trump and Musk’s bromance would have international effects on AI development. But that bromance was over by June 2025, and there’s no evidence their brief alliance had any discernible influence on the direction of AI this year.
ArtsHub’s third and fourth AI predictions were that there will be no resolution in the battle to protect artists from AI, and that AI will become a normalised part of most offices.
On this score, we guessed closer to the truth.
March: Australian data reveals impact on local games and music industries
In March we reported on a research working paper published by the University of South Australia on how Gen AI technologies are being used by Australian gaming companies to produce music and audio content.
The report’s interviews with musicians and voiceover artists revealed how the rise of Gen AI had compromised their employment opportunities, along with the arrival of other software that can compose, produce, mix and master musical works.
For Australian games companies, the temptation to replace human artists with cheaper Gen AI-driven music and audio software is intensifying in business environments dominated by budget constraints and under pressure to increase productivity.
At the same time, many gaming companies were being frustrated by errors and ‘hallucinations’ brought on by their use of emerging Gen AI programs, the report found.
University of South Australia’s research report showed that while some Australian gaming sector companies were steadily integrating Gen AI products into their businesses to increase productivity, others were not transitioning to AI, citing their wariness of these technologies as ‘black box’ systems lacking in transparency and reliability.
July: local authors campaign against AI provisions in contracts
Four months later, after news that big tech company Meta had been scraping the work of Australian authors (among others) to train its AI engines, Australian writers started hitting back to try to dissuade their publishers from issuing contracts with clauses that could permit a third party to use their work for purposes of machine learning and generative AI.
This outcry could be described as the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg that is likely just around the corner for Australian authors and artists until the government gets serious about legislating proper artist copyright protections in this area.
August: arts sector mobilises to protect copyright
In August, ArtsHub reported on the sector furore that erupted in response to the Australian Productivity Commission’s interim report, Harnessing data and digital technology, which outlined ‘priority reforms’ and ‘actionable recommendations’ to the Federal Government around use of AI for economic gain.
Included in the report were suggestions the Australian Government could introduce a Text and Data Mining exception clause into the Australian Copyright Act 1968, which would enable AI companies to mine and use Australian artists’ copyrighted material without the need for permission, licensing agreements or remuneration for its use.
Artists and peak bodies continued to warn of the dangers of such legislative directions in the weeks and months after this report’s release. In response, in late October, the Federal Government publicly ruled out any future adoption of the Productivity Commissions’ TDM exemption recommendation in the Copyright Act, much to the relief of the Australian arts community (and more on that coming shortly).
August: predictions around AI cost savings in commercial art galleries
Also in August, in an ArtsHub opinion piece, Sydney gallerist Michael Reid OAM laid out his predictions on how art galleries will be using AI a few years from now.
Aptly titled ‘A gallerists’ view‘, his article struck a nerve – especially with its blunt predictions about galleries’ likely ‘cost gains’ from greater AI adoption.
Reid anticipated that what we will see in the next few years is that more galleries will improve their bottom lines, not through increased sales, but through reduced staffing costs and the fact they are employing fewer people.
Reid sees this trend as being led by large global corporations (like the big banks) and thinks galleries will soon be using more powerful AI software to streamline their administrative systems, which will eliminate the need for human labour in these areas.
Read: After the Rain: 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial review
However, Reid puts a decidedly positive spin on these potential redundancies, describing them as liberation from administrative burdens for stretched-thin gallery managers, who are currently wearing a lot of different hats.
His view is that AI will be a good thing for gallerists who will soon be able to allocate less of their time on tiresome data management tasks, and spend more time working face-to-face with clients.
October to November: the arts sector responds to copyright decision
In late October came an important declaration by Federal Government Attorney-General Michelle Rowland that eased the minds of many Australian artists fearful of the potential changes to the Australian Copyright Act proposed by the Australian Productivity Commission’s interim report in August.
As Rowland remarked at the time: ‘Australian creatives are not only world class, but they are also the lifeblood of Australian culture, and we must ensure the right legal protections are in place.’
Days after this announcement, Australian Publishers Association CEO Patrizia Di Biase-Dyson shared her thoughts on the government’s stated intentions in an ArtsHub opinion piece which warned that, although the government’s pledge to protect artists was a significant win, the advocacy fight must be maintained to ensure those protections come to pass.
In parallel, Executive Director of Public Affairs & Government Relations at APRA AMCOS, Nicholas Pickard wrote a terrific article for ArtsHub documenting the sustained advocacy campaign that he and sector colleagues have undertaken to see firmer copyright protection for artists around AI technologies.
His piece ‘Anatomy of a campaign‘ outlines the importance of dedicated whole-of-sector advocacy work to ensure artists’ value is recognised and fairly rewarded.
December: looking at the Federal Government’s national AI plan
Finally, it should be noted that earlier this month the Australian Government released its national AI Plan.
As reported in The Conversation on the day of its release, the plan focuses mostly on how the Federal Government will support investment in AI technologies, data centres and AI literacy programs for the Australian workforce into the future.
The plan makes scant mention of the kind of AI copyright concerns artists have been worried about all year, so we are still waiting to see government action in the all-important (but very difficult) area of Gen AI and artists’ intellectual property rights.
And what about those poor writers who just so happen to write like AI? Patrick Stokes considered that dilemma for ArtsHub in December: You write like AI, people think it’s AI generated—what should you do?
Key 2025 exhibitions that shifted the AI debate
But to end the year on a happier note, our Visual Arts Editor Gina Fairley’s reviews of several major exhibitions show the breadth of responses from artists to AI technologies. These include Christopher Kulendran Thomas’ solo show Safe Zone at Artspace in Sydney, which runs through to February 2026, and the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art’s current summer blockbuster exhibition Data Dreams: Art and AI, which continues to April 2026.
