For those who don’t know, this piece is titled ‘Unfinished Painting’, by Keith Haring. He painted it about a year before his death of AIDs. I believe he actually finished other pieces between this one and his death. He left the majority of the canvas blank to represent his life and art career cut short due to HIV/AIDs. This was a deliberate choice and commentary about all that we lose (both personally and culturally) by ignoring the AIDs crisis at the time (1989). He was devastated he didn’t have time to make more art. 'Finishing’ Unfinished Painting is straight up spitting on Haring’s grave and shows no understanding to the meaning behind the art. The AI interpretation doesn’t even follow his extremely recognizable shape language and symbols. This is why people are angry about AI art. All commerce images and no meaning or humanity
Thank you for typing this out! I couldn’t formulate my thoughts at the time because it really and truly goes beyond “they didn’t match the pattern”. There is significance behind this piece never being completed. “Unfinished Painting” is historical on at *minimum* three different layers - reflecting one person’s struggle with AIDS, encapsulating a very terrifying time in the LGBT+ community (though AIDS doesn’t discriminate by sexuality), and showing how the LGBT+ community was (and still is) all woven together with the same struggles. And while the completion *could be* a symbol of how even HIV can be overcome (at least two people have been cured!!!!), the fact that it was completed by a fucking computer rings this symbol as hollow. Our lives are not bits of data. We are not statistics. We never fucking were.
AI advocates, go pick up a brush.
The thing with this kind of use for AI is that it all too often is excused with something innocent. “It’s so sad this was never finished! But we can now use AI to finish it! We’re helping the artist!”
But you’re not helping the artist. You’re tacking your own name onto their work in an attempt to milk some of their credit for yourself. In one of the laziest ways possible.
Sometimes art doesn’t get finished. Sometimes a song is never fully written. Sometimes a novel series isn’t completed. Maybe it’s because the artist died, or maybe it’s because the spark they had for the art in question went out before they completed the work. But that’s life. It’s unfortunate, and often sad. It leaves the fans of that artist feeling empty, because they want what they’ll never get. But that does not justify taking it upon yourself to “complete” a work for an artist, especially when the artist does not ask you to. Especially this painting, which was very obviously intentionally left unfinished by the artist. But even if it hadn’t been, and it truly wasn’t finished before he died, then that does not mean it is ok to ask a computer to finish it.
People look to AI as the big solution to completing all these things that were lost to time. They want to use actors who have died for those big, touching cameos in movies. They want to hear songs that were never completed, sung by voices who are long gone. They want to see more artwork, more creativity, by artists who aren’t here anymore. But all throughout human history, people have accepted that once someone is dead, then that’s it. The only way we can appreciate them is in what they have left us, not in what a computer might be able to create by stealing their work and creating a false image. It’s not their work. They didn’t make it. To call it theirs would be nothing short of a lie.
Kelly Carlin, daughter of the late and all time great George Carlin, shared this statement regarding an AI-generated special imitating him:
She’s right. Part of the beauty of humanity and its creations is that it is ephemeral. Death enhances our lives, not detracts for it. AI making a ghoulish reanimation of the dead should strike you with such horror that you understand why necromancy is banned by man and God.
