The Factory and the algorithm: Andy Warhol, AI, and the outsourcing of creative labour

In 1963, Andy Warhol opened The Factory, a studio where art wasn’t crafted by a lone artist but assembled on a production line. This radical approach—treating ideas as more important than manual execution—pushed back against the romantic notion of the solitary genius. He blurred the lines between artist and manufacturer, turning creative labour into something more corporate, more industrial.

Today, we’re seeing a similar shift. Artificial intelligence is encroaching on creative writing, forcing us to ask whether the value of a written work lies in the spark of its conception or in the painstaking labour of putting words on the page. Warhol was celebrated for outsourcing the physical process of artmaking while keeping creative control. Will writers in the AI era be judged the same way? Is originality in the idea, or does the act of writing itself still hold intrinsic value?

Andy Warhol and the art of outsourcing

Warhol didn’t just embrace mechanical reproduction—he made it his brand. His silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Campbell’s soup cans weren’t about expressive brushstrokes; they were about detachment, about art that could be mass-produced like a factory product.

His assistants, known as Factory workers, handled much of the actual creation. Gerald Malanga, a poet and filmmaker, was one of Warhol’s closest collaborators, responsible for producing many of those iconic silkscreens. Yet the question of authorship became messy—especially when it came to Che Guevara (1967), a Warhol-esque print that, it turned out, wasn’t actually by Warhol at all.

While in Rome in 1968, Malanga, facing financial difficulties, created silkscreen images of Che Guevara in Warhol’s style without Warhol’s authorisation. He exhibited these works in a Rome gallery, presenting them as Warhol originals. When the gallery sought authentication, Malanga wrote to Warhol, explaining that without validation, he risked legal trouble. Warhol, upon learning of this, authenticated the artworks but stipulated that all proceeds be sent directly to him, as Malanga was not authorised to sell the pieces.

This incident highlighted the complexities of authorship and the value placed on the creator’s identity versus the creative idea itself. Even though the artworks were produced by Malanga, their association with Warhol’s name significantly impacted their reception and value.

AI and the new creative Factory

Generative AI functions like one of Warhol’s Factory workers—churning out content at an industrial pace, following human instructions, and muddying the question of authorship even further. AI-generated writing, whether in journalism, fiction, or poetry, doesn’t emerge from thin air. It responds to prompts, shaping itself around the ideas of human users. But if AI can produce a well-structured, stylistically polished piece from a few key inputs, where does that leave the traditional role of the writer?

Some might argue that writing, like Warhol’s silkscreens, is just a vessel for an idea—that true creativity lies in the original thought, not in the labour of stringing words together. Warhol’s genius wasn’t in physically making his work but in reframing mass production as art. Will future writers be judged the same way—not for their sentence-by-sentence craftsmanship, but for the uniqueness of their ideas?

As the Warhol-Malanga controversy showed, creative labour isn’t so easily dismissed. Malanga may have followed Warhol’s vision, but his choices—his touch—shaped the final work. Writing is the same. It isn’t just transcription; it’s a process of refinement, discovery, and deep engagement with language. A writer’s voice, their idiosyncrasies, their instincts for rhythm and nuance—these things shape meaning beyond the conceptual level.

If AI can mimic style and coherence, does it devalue the act of writing, or does it force us to redefine what writing even is?

The future of creativity: control, collaboration, or collapse?

The Factory was both a creative revolution and a provocation. Warhol dared the art world to reconsider what it meant to “create.” AI is doing something similar—challenging us to rethink the role of the writer. If machines can draft essays, craft narratives, and imitate literary voices, does that mean writing will become all about who generates the ideas, not who puts them into words? Or will there always be something inherently human about the act of writing itself?

The future of creative labour is still uncertain. Warhol’s legacy is both admired and criticised—was he a visionary or a brand manager? A singular artist or just the face of a system? AI will likely face the same contradictions. It may never replace human creativity outright, but it could become an indispensable tool, an invisible collaborator shaping how we work. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that once technology enters the creative process, it doesn’t retreat.

The Factory never really closed—it just evolved.

So maybe the real question isn’t whether AI will take part in creative writing. It’s how we’ll define authorship in a world where machines do some of the work. Warhol understood that artistic value isn’t in the hand that executes but in the mind that conceives. Whether writing follows the same trajectory remains to be seen.

Images are used under fair use for the purpose of critical analysis and commentary.