That is not how art works at all though. It's very difficult to distinguish a real van gogh from a fake van gogh. The real will still sell for millions and the fake will not.

I can’t tell if someone is selling me something made locally, or is just pawning something made in China as local, but I still try to support local because I believe the underlying knock on effects are greater.

The same holds for AI art.

The made in China one is cheaper and better for society for comparative advantage reasons. Trade is good!

Trade isn't good when its for products made with forced labor.

Supporting local manufacturing helps to build resilience in the supply chain. Outsourcing everything to another country can be great for margins but it adds risk via external dependencies.

People appreciate art for the story. It’s why originals sell for more than prints.

The print's story is the original's story with one sentence added: "and then I printed it a million times".

People will pay more for the original because it's rare.

If a copy of a Van Gogh is next to the original, and you can't which is the original, do they have equal artistic value?

If an artist who studied Van Gogh intensely made an original piece in Van Gogh's style, does it have equal artistic merit as one of Van Gogh's originals?

AI is just going to be another aspect of provenance, and if it's found out an art piece had AI used to make it, it won't be forgotten or ignored.

For me personally, it's more about appreciating the act and capabilities possible by a human being.

I find it similar to watching chess. AI/Chess engines will always be better than humans, but it's exciting to watch a human play to see what they can do.

I think OP understands there may not be a physical difference, but the provenance / "Colour of the Bits" is important to them; and that's a valid position to take (not the only valid position to take).

For example, a woolen blanket made by my mother is much, much dearer to me than an equivalent woolen blanket made in a factory.

I see it very likely that certified-provenance human-art may command high prices in the future; but also for physical part, it's pretty trivial and doesn't have to be so posh and fancy - anything from street art to art galleries and art collectives/workshops.

This is already the case for the most part. I don't think anyone expects AI to displace "name brand" art. Low quality and stock art will become profitless virtually overnight, while artists that already make good money for original works will likely continue to do so. Your blanket analogy is apt for that reason. Human made blankets are indeed more special and people do often pay higher prices for them, but the vast majority of blankets sold or in use were made by machines at this point.

> I don't think anyone expects AI to displace "name brand" art

The problem isn't for existing artists (except in terms of ethical issues)—it's for new/budding artists, who will have to contend with challenges to the authenticity of their work. How can they prove that they put their blood and sweat into making a piece of artwork by hand when an AI could've generated something equally passable?

> If you can't distinguish between human-made art and AI-made art

The art is always human-made. Missing attribution doesn't mean "machine made it". Humans developed the AI, ran the AI, created the training data, picked the non-horrible sample from the output, etc.

The woolen blanket is not a precise example: you like one more for sentimental reasons, but you agree that both are blankets. If you had said "I don't think that a factory-made woolen blanket is really a woolen blanket" the discussion would be different.