Artist Refik Anadol uses generative artificial intelligence to produce images, seen here as part of the ‘Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive’ exhibition at Serpentine North, London.
Hugo Glendinning | Courtesy of Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.
The art world, like many other industries, is grappling with how best to use artificial intelligence, especially in its most recent form, generative AI.
Image generators such as Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 can produce images from written instructions, and such technology has been used to create a magazine cover, win an art award and dress the Pope in a white puffer jacket.
Some artists CNBC spoke with described the technology’s potential as scary or a threat, or expressed concerns about copyright. But they also said they were excited about what generative AI could bring.
Installation artist Rubem Robierb was “shocked” when he first saw what generative AI could do, he told CNBC by phone. “In his childhood, [generative] AI can create multiple images in one second [than] the human brain can even process. This is not necessarily a good thing, but we are all here forced to do the experiment,” she said in a subsequent email.
Robierb specializes in sculpture and a work called “Dandara” was exhibited in New York City, in memory of Dandara dos Santos, a transgender woman killed in Fortaleza, Brazil, while he also made “Dream Machine”, a large pair of butterfly wings commissioned by Celebrity Cruises for Edge, its billion-dollar cruise ship.
The artist Rubem Robierb with his sculpture “Dream Machine”. Robierb wants “legal limits” to be introduced to protect artists’ intellectual property.
Ruben Robierb
The artist, who lives between New York and Miami, said he has not yet used artificial intelligence in his work. But she explained that doing so is “not a matter of choice” and added that she is evaluating how and when to use it.
“We can also see it as a threat to creativity. As it exists right now, [generative] AI sources from known images, known artwork, and known artists to complete a task. Legal boundaries need to be created to protect intellectual property,” Robierb said.
In Europe, the European Commission’s AI law aims to regulate the technology, depending on how risky it is considered in terms of citizens’ rights or safety, and will likely come into force in about two years, according to a December press release .
Generative art
Using generative AI ethically is a key consideration for London gallery Serpentine, which has been developing AI projects with artists since 2014, according to its CEO Bettina Korek.
One of the gallery’s current exhibitions, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, by Refik Anadol, features large-scale AI-generated artworks such as “Artificial Realities: Coral,” created using approximately 135 million images of coral that are “openly accessible online,” a press release reads.
“AI seems very far from our kind of human experience. But Refik has created such an immersive, sensory experience,” Korek told CNBC via video call. “The public is really encountering art first and technology second,” he said, adding that Anadol has focused on the importance of using “ethically sourced” data to train the artificial intelligence that produces the images.
Artist Refik Anadol has used generative AI to create works of art, seen here at the “Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive” exhibition, at the Serpentine North gallery in London, UK
Hugo Glendinning | Courtesy of Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.
Anadol used what it calls a “Large Nature Model,” in which data from the Natural History Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution, among others, was used to train an artificial intelligence to produce content for a work called “Living Archive: Large Nature Model,” which was first presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
Ethically sourcing data to train AI is something that’s part of “a much larger conversation we’re thinking about with artists,” Korek said, and the Serpentine’s fourth Future Art Ecosystems report, released in March , called on public institutions to “understand themselves as intermediaries of the role of artificial intelligence in society.”
Other galleries, such as 37xDubai in the United Arab Emirates, are embracing AI-generated art. The venue’s exhibition, Generative: Art & Systems, features works by artists including Julian Espagnon, which mixes design, code and art, according to gallery founder and CEO Danilo S. Carlucci.
What are we doing, replacing the human experience?
Asked whether generative art can match the value of art created by humans, Carlucci said generative art involves creativity and skill, in an email to CNBC. “Some of the artists featured in our exhibition are highly technical and have a very strong understanding of coding. The works they create require hours of work and, similar to traditional art, the story behind their works comes with a thoughtful message… ” he said.
At the Serpentine, the gallery’s Arts Technologies team is working on a number of AI projects, including an exhibition that will explore artists and musicians Holly Herndon’s “dark corridors of what it means to be an artist in the age of AI” and Mat Dryhurst, which will open in the fall, according to a news release.
Dryhurst and Herndon are also co-founders of Spawning, an organization focused on data governance for artificial intelligence. One of its products, the Have I Been Trained search engine, lets people see if their work and images have been used to train some of the great language models behind generative AI, with the ability to prevent its use in the future.
The AI platforms Stability and Hugging Face are two of the generative platforms using the Have I Been Trained registry, and Spawning is “actively courting” both OpenAI and Midjourney, according to Jordan Meyer, its co-founder and CEO, in an email on CNBC.
Artificial intelligence as an artist’s “tool”.
Abstract artist Shane Guffogg has mixed feelings about artificial intelligence. He described artificial intelligence as “a tool” in a video call with CNBC. “Part of it is scary. Another part of it is exciting because it allowed me to unlock what I was feeling ‘sensorially,'” he said.
Guffogg has synesthesia, a sensory condition that means he associates individual colors with particular musical notes, and wanted to create a musical composition based on his art that could be performed by a pianist.
He turned to software developers to help him do so for a piece called “Sounds of Color” — part of an exhibition he will show in Venice, Italy, starting April 20 — but found that some developers wanted to replace the element human with technology.
“They wanted it to be completely AI-generated and not even based on my paintings, but on my movements. And… the human element was removed. And I just said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that,'” Guffogg said.
California-based artist Shane Guffogg worked with an AI software programmer and a pianist to create an exhibition that will take place in Venice, Italy, between April and November. He said artificial intelligence technology is both “scary” and “exciting.”
Shane Guffogg
Another developer wanted to create a hologram of Guffogg that could create new art. “He said … once we document all your movements, then we can continually generate new paintings of you long after you’re gone,” Guffogg said. A suggestion he also rejected.
Guffogg worked with AI software programmer Jonah Lynch and pianist Anthony Cardella on “Sounds of Color,” and said he was brought to tears the first time he “heard” one of his paintings being performed. “I could hear everything [musical] influences I listened to while painting,” he said.
Guffogg hasn’t experimented with generative AI programs, but he said people have shown him images made this way. Creating your own art is about “the joy of discovery,” he said. “What are we doing, replacing the human experience? … We hope … that it will wear out in some sense and it will no longer be the new world,” he said of generative artificial intelligence in the context of art.
Robierb had a similar sentiment. “[An] original artwork will only be original if it comes from one person… nothing can beat that, original creativity. I think at some point we will walk into an art fair and have to label works of art [that are] man-made,” he told CNBC.