The use of generative AI for creative purposes has spawned a major countermovement. From game developers reeling from a wave of criticism for using the tech to artists staging mass protests against AI, the backlash against what’s being hailed as a technological revolution grew massively last year.
In a startlingly literal example of this growing fury, a University of Alaska Fairbanks undergraduate student was detained after ripping “artwork off the walls and eating it in a reported protest,” according to a university police department statement quoted by the school’s student newspaper, The Sun Star.
The student, Graham Granger, was accused of chewing and spitting out small images that were pinned to the wall of a UAF art exhibit, which featured 160 AI-generated images by fine arts student Nick Dwyer. Photos taken by The Sun Star show crumpled-up pieces of paper strewn across a polished concrete floor.
According to the police department, Granger chewed up at least 57 of the 160 images. As a result, the undergraduate student was arrested for “criminal mischief in the 5th degree and booked at the Fairbanks Correctional Center,” according to the student newspaper.
It’s yet another example of how anti-AI sentiment is gripping the art world, highlighting a heated debate over human authorship and expression in a world filled with text-to-image generators that can conjure up works from a simple prompt in an instant.
Dwyer has since defended his work, telling The Sun Star that he had been using AI for his art since 2017. He said his exhibit “explores identity, character narrative creation and crafting false memories of relationships in an interactive role digitally crafted before, during and after a state of AI psychosis.”
The term “AI psychosis” has been used by health professionals to describe a troubling phenomenon in which users of AI tools are experiencing symptoms of psychosis or delusional episodes. Experts have raised concerns over the trend, warning that more and more people could be caught up in these delusions as they become hooked on AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In extreme cases, these tools have been alleged to have led to numerous deaths, including the suicide of a 16-year-old.
Dwyer told The Sun Star that he had fallen into AI psychosis himself, turning to art to portray the experience.
The art world has been reeling from a flood of AI-generated pieces for years now. We’ve seen instances of artists being wrongfully accused of using the tech, while others, like users on the subreddit Defending AI Art, are arguing that it’s an entirely legitimate way of expressing oneself.
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