How is AI changing what I need to do as an artist trying to sell my work in 2026?

We’re facing an existential crisis as creators. Nothing you see on a screen is guaranteed to be real anymore—images, videos, people talking, houses, trips, text—100% of it can be fake, and you won’t be able to tell the difference. This creates a massive shift: anything that looks super polished, perfectly edited, or overly produced will be assumed to be AI-generated and not real. People are already over that. The trend even before AI was moving away from polished press releases and short media clips toward long-form, unedited conversations like podcasts where you can’t fake it. Now with AI, the only thing humans will trust and want to see are things that are real—authentic, unfiltered, long-form content where they can get to know the real you. If you’re not being the real you with no filter, people will assume you’re fake AI or won’t bond with you. The opportunity is huge: be real, be vulnerable, show your scars, and you’ll get extra engagement compared to the flood of AI content everyone will revolt against.

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Asked by an artist trying to understand AI’s impact on marketing · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2026-02-09