Artists vs. Nature

Today in class we mentioned the currently indistinguishable difference between art created by people, and art that is beautiful of its own existence out in nature as to whether these things qualify as art itself. Interestingly enough, we mentioned that artists specifically try to immitate what we know as the world via the skills that they have in manipulating different mediums to accomplish this.
With both of these things having been mentioned, I feel that it is interesting to take note of people who have been studying computer graphics with the intention of making the artistic world that we view much more "beautiful" than our own real life could ever allow. As an example of this, consider all of the work that went into the movie Avatar, this level of artistic manipulation is stagering enough that many people can sit to watch this movie and feel like a part of the environment that has been laid out for them.
Considering this ideal of creating an artistically better world, is it possible that artists are working towards the idea of creating something along the same lines as The Matrix to keep people entertained? Are we going to eventually need to give up our reality with the ideal of art as its replacement to keep ourselves entertained?

What are your thoughts?