A recent topic on X highlighted some of the ethical issues inherent in artificial intelligence after someone used an AI image generator to “finish” a Keith Haring painting intentionally left unfinished as a commentary on the AIDS crisis . The artist died of complications from the disease just months after creating the work.
Haring’s “Unfinished Painting” (1989), a white canvas with a purple background that covers only the upper left quadrant, is covered with the illustrator’s signature thick-lined figuration and drawings that end abruptly. Aside from a few purple lines that slide across the untouched canvas below, the punctuated painting is breathtakingly silent beyond the broken edges of what Haring had rendered in his recognizable visual language, alluding to the thousands of lives cut short at first. of the epidemic which has affected many members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Last summer, artist Brooke Peachley, who preferred to use the last name she uses on her social media accounts to protect her privacy online, job a photo of the work on magnitude and continues to receive responses daily. More than six months later, another user responded to the original post with an AI generative image that “complemented” Haring’s intentionally half-painted artwork, writing: “Now, using AI, we can finish what he couldn’t finish!
The post went viral and the reaction was immediate: commenters used words like “parody,” “rude” and “cruel” to describe what they saw as a clear affront to both Haring and other people. whose life was lost to AIDS. Some X users expressed outrage at the brazenness of using AI to complete Haring’s meaningful work, with an user calling generative art “a way for lazy and ignorant people to achieve their selfish desires while going against everything the art world stands for.” Still others applauded the post, likely for its ability to stir controversy.
The AI-generated image, posted by user @DonnelVillager, is likely an example of “baiting” – intentionally polarizing or anger-inducing content intended to generate engagement by eliciting strong reactions from people. others. X and other algorithmic social media platforms tendency to “reward” posts that get a lot of engagement by putting them at the top of people’s feeds, regardless of their interest in the topic at hand. Since Elon Musk took control of what was then called Twitter in October 2022, the site has seen a increase in hateful and inflammatory remarks. Last summer, Musk presented a policy which allows users who pay for X Premium to share ad revenue from their Tweets, providing a monetary incentive to people who intentionally post controversial content that will drive engagement, whether positive or negative.
Whether the message is bait or not, Peachley said Hyperallergic“This is the kind of bait you go to hell for,” highlighting the ethical transgressions associated with distorting the message of Haring’s original work.
“I find the ‘finished’ version of the artwork abhorrent,” she said. “Not only does ‘finishing’ the painting completely strip it of its original meaning, it spits on the tens of thousands of queer individuals who lost their lives to the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s and ’90s.”
“And doing it using generative AI, a computer program that cannot feel the weight of what it does or create with any human intent, only adds to the lack of respect,” Peachley continued, noting that the AI was incapable of doing so. to accurately recreate Haring’s figures, depicting abstractions rather than the artist’s characteristic human forms. The Haring Foundation declined to comment.
Artist and writer Molly Crabapple, a vocal critic of AI art who wrote a open letter this spring, calling for restrictions on AI-generated illustrations in publishing, did not mince words when Hyperallergic asked his opinion on Haring’s “finished” work.
“That’s the real use of AI,” she said. “It’s a way for fools to suck every bit of anima, pathos and humanity out of art. This allows sleeping consumers to turn the artists they claim to love into undead content-producing puppets, and it allows them to pretend they are the real creators while doing it.
Last month, a database artists used to train the Midjourney AI generator has been leaked online. Haring was one of more than 16,000 visual creators on the list, which included figures such as Salvador Dalí, David Hockney and Yayoi Kusama. AI image generators scrape artwork from the internet and train their tools to create works in the style of specific creators. Artists reacted on several fronts, from assignment “No to the art of AI” on social networks to adopt a tool which “poisoned” image generation software several lawsuits accusing AI companies of violating intellectual property rights.
“Generative AI is harming artists around the world by stealing not only our pre-existing work to build its libraries without consent, but also our jobs, and it’s not even doing it authentically or correctly,” Peachley said.
