This Girl With ‘AI Earrings’ Has Sparked a Dutch Art Controversy

At first look it appears to be simply a fashionable tackle Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. But look extra carefully and issues get a little unusual.

Firstly, there are two glowing earrings within the picture hanging within the Mauritshuis museum within the Dutch metropolis of The Hague. And aren’t these freckles on her face really… a barely inhuman shade of pink?

That’s as a result of the work — one in every of a number of fan recreations changing 1665 unique whereas it is on mortgage for a large Vermeer present at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum — was made utilizing artificial intelligence (AI).

Its presence has sparked a fierce debate, with questions over whether or not it belongs within the hallowed halls of the Mauritshuis — and whether or not it ought to be classed as artwork in any respect.

“It’s controversial, so people are for it or against it,” Mauritshuis press officer Boris de Munnick instructed AFP.

“The people who selected this, they liked it, they knew that it was AI, but we liked the creation. So we chose it, and we hung it.”

– ‘Incredible insult’ –

Berlin-based digital creator Julian van Dieken submitted the picture after Mauritshuis requested individuals to ship of their variations of the well-known portray for an set up known as “My Girl with a Pearl”.

Van Dieken stated he had used the AI software Midjourney — which may generate complicated photos on the idea of a immediate, utilizing thousands and thousands of pictures from the web — and Photoshop.

The Mauritshuis then selected it as one in every of 5 pictures out of three,482 submitted by followers that might be printed and bodily hung within the room the place “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is generally housed.

“It’s surreal to see it in a museum,” van Dieken wrote on Instagram.

The budding artists ranged in age from three to 94, depicting the “Girl” in various types starting from a puppet to a dinosaur and a piece of fruit. 

But the choice to decide on an AI-generated picture sparked a backlash.

One artist stated on the Instagram feed for the Mauritshuis exhibition that it was a “shame and an incredible insult”, and dozens of others piled in.

A standard criticism was that AI instruments can breach the copyright of different artists through the use of their works as the bottom for artificially generated pictures.

Artist Eva Toorenent, of the European Guild for Artificial Intelligence Regulation, criticised what she known as “unethical technology”.

“Without the work of human artists, this program could not generate works at all,” she was quoted as saying by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

– ‘What is artwork?’ –

“It’s such a difficult question — what is art, and what is not art?” stated the Mauritshuis’s de Munnick.

But he insisted that the museum, whose assortment boasts three Vermeers and practically a dozen Rembrandts, had not intentionally got down to make an inventive assertion on AI.

“Our opinion is, we think it’s a nice picture, we think it’s a creative process,” he stated. “We’re not the museum to discuss if AI belongs in an art museum.”

He admitted although that “up close, you see that the freckles are a little spooky.”

Visitors to the Mauritshuis have been equally divided, he added.

“Younger people tend to say, it’s artificial intelligence, what’s new. Elderly people sometimes say we like the more traditional paintings.”

The Mauritshuis have been wanting ahead to the return of the actual “Girl” in April, he added. The portray’s fame has elevated in recent times resulting from a 1999 novel by US creator Tracy Chevalier and an ensuing Hollywood movie.

“Well, she is beautiful in the (Rijksmuseum) exhibition… But we will be very happy when she is at home.”