Despite some very harsh critics, AI art is now big business at top auction houses and museums.

When you think about how art is created, you might imagine a painter, photographer, or sculptor deep in their studio. But what happens when someone sitting in front of a computer screen uses artificial intelligence and data to create visuals? Is it art? This is a question being asked and answered by some of the world’s most prestigious museums, critics, and auction houses. Some artists call AI a “revolutionary new medium.” Some people call it “theft.” We wanted to see it for ourselves, so we went to Los Angeles to meet Refik Anadolu. The 40-year-old Turkish-American artist is considered a pioneer in the world of AI art. If you’re wondering what that world is like, pick up Dramamine.

Refik Anadol invited us to this space in his LA studio. All images surrounding us were created by Anadolu using artificial intelligence.

We’ll talk about how he created it in a moment. But first, accept it. A hypnotic flow of shapes and colors that morph and evolve in the mirrors and LED screens that surround us. Feel like Alice in Wonderland wandering into Studio 54.

During this time, a device around your neck emits different AI-generated scents, such as rain or flowers, to match what you’re looking at. Anadolu said another device would eventually monitor key viewer statistics, such as heart rate, and use that data to change the art in real time.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Is this a party trick?

Refik Anadolu: I don’t think so. I feel like it’s a new art form. It’s like discovering a new place you’ve never been before.

If that all sounds a little out there, consider the global scale of Refik Anadol’s work. His gigantic, evocative images span the Sphere in Las Vegas, the facade of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Antonio Gaudi’s Casa Batlló in Barcelona.

Sharyn Alfonsi: If someone asked you what you do, what would you say?

Refik Anadol: So I’m a media artist and I use data and AI in my work. So for over 16 years, I have been painting with a thinking brush.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What is a thought brush?

Refik Anadol: We believe that the information around us, the data around us, has its own voice.

Sharyn Alfonsi: But like painting, drawing, what we traditionally think of, sculpture.

Refik Anadolu: So—

Sharyn Alfonsi: –Do you do those things?

Refik Anadol: In my mind’s eye, I may not be able to draw it well technically… but in my mind’s eye, I can calculate and I can imagine geometrically what exactly my mind’s eye is looking for.

To create art, Anadolu uses large amounts of data. For this work, he used 200 million photographs of the Earth. Data from NASA was the driving force behind these exhibits.

Refik Anadol: If you think of the data as a pigment, I don’t think it needs to be dried. It can move in any shape, any color, any texture.

Sharin Alfonsi: That sounds kind of weird.

Refik Anadolu: It’s strange because I think as artists we want something beyond reality.

To show how he does it, Anadolu grabbed a game controller.

Refik Anadol: So here we are – a new algorithm where I’m literally controlling the entire system.

Anadolu said his team handpicked 153 million images for the California landscape piece.

Each image is transformed into a set of data points representing characteristics such as color, texture, and shape. They are then plotted in multidimensional space. That data is what the AI ​​learns from. So when you receive the prompt, you can create your own new version of the image. Only images that, in Anadolu’s words, “exist in the mind of a machine.”

Sharin Alfonsi: Isn’t this a real place?

Refik Anadolu: That’s not true. This is an AI that dreams of this world. And now we are rebuilding this world together.

Anadolu then applies a special algorithm to blend the images into his signature flowing style.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Are you a computer programmer or an artist?

Refik Anadol: I’m an artist and I love computers. But with the advent of AI, it feels like we can now program it in ways that were previously unimaginable.

Sharin Alfonsi: How much of this is driven by you and how much is driven by machines?

Refik Anadol: This is a great question. Because for the past 10 years, I’ve tried my best to be 50% machine and 50% human.

By treating AI as a co-creator, Refik Anadol has become a darling of the tech world. He collaborated with Google, MIT, and Microsoft to create large-scale public installations.

He is favored by some in the art world and has sold works at auction for more than $1 million. His work is exhibited in museums around the world. And in 2022, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned the piece. It’s “Unsupervised,” a massive 24-foot-tall installation that fills the lobby of MoMA.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How did the public react when they saw “Unsupervised”?

Glenn Rory: It was an absolutely extraordinary hit. People would sit in front of it for hours, literally transfixed by what they were seeing.

Glenn Rory served as director of MoMA for 30 years. He retired in September. Lowry said that to create “Unsupervised,” Refik Anadol trained an AI system based on publicly available metadata from the entire MoMA collection. Think of metadata as the digital DNA of each work. Metadata describes and identifies art. Anadolu used MoMA’s metadata to reimagine 200 years of art.

Glenn Lowry: He wrote some algorithms that allowed data from one object to evolve into data from another object and become a third or fourth object that we’ve never seen before. And I think people found that very satisfying.

Research shows that museum visitors typically spend about 28 seconds admiring a great piece of art. As for “Unsupervised,” Anadolu says it was 38 minutes. But not everyone was so enamored.

Jerry Saltz: It’s like a giant lava lamp that you can’t take your eyes off of.

Jerry Saltz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine. He called “Unsupervised” a $500,000 screensaver.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When people came here and saw this, they stared at it for 38 minutes. Isn’t that a sign of success?

Jerry Saltz: Popularity is not a sign of success. How much time you spend on a piece of art is not a sign of success, it’s more important than your willingness to be quiet within yourself, go to uncomfortable places, be comfortable in that place, and ask yourself questions. You can sit in front of Refik Adanol, pass out, and not think too much. I think, “Oh, a painting that looks a little like Renoir transforms into a painting that resembles Picasso, and then transforms into an amoeba.”

Sharyn Alfonsi: …It’s something to see… Is it art?

Jerry Saltz: AI is an art. AI will become an art.

But AI has a long way to go, Saltz says.

Jerry Saltz: AI has been around for a day now. And we’re already having the conversation, “I don’t like it, you like it, it’s good, it’s bad, it’s new, it’s young.” AI, most of what we see in Sharin is crap.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Shit?

Jerry Saltz: 90% of it is crap. However, 90% of the art created during the Renaissance was bad. Things take time.

Glenn Rory: I think we need to recognize that challenging works of art are always initially misunderstood by many people.

MoMA’s Glenn Rory says skepticism about AI mirrors reactions to the advent of photography 200 years ago.

Glenn Rory: What does it mean if all of a sudden the human hand is removed from creating images? I think artificial intelligence is similar. But I don’t think you can stop technology.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She doesn’t think AI should be welcomed into the art world.

Sharyn Alfonsi: You called this the greatest art heist in history.

Molly Crabapple: Yes.

Sharin Alfonsi: Why?

Molly Crabapple: Well, when we talk about art heists, we’re usually talking about one, two, three paintings being taken away from a museum. They stole billions of images.

Crabapple argues that museums, galleries and auction houses should not buy or display AI art that has been trained on the work of other artists without their consent. She calls these popular AI art generators, which allow users to input prompts to create striking and sometimes surreal images, “corporate plagiarism bots.” She says they are trained in art scavenged from the web, including her work. This is an illustration created by Crabapple in Aleppo, Syria. We asked our AI image generator to create a painting of the Syrian skyline in the style of Molly Crabapple, and it created it in seconds – so similar that it stinks.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Has someone ever asked you, “Can I feed your images into this system?”

Molly Crabapple: Certainly not. None of the artists were asked for their consent. None of the artists received compensation. In fact, the credits don’t even appear.

AI companies have told lawmakers that what they are doing falls under fair use, a legal doctrine that allows unauthorized use of copyrighted works under certain circumstances. They claim that AI learns and learns just like humans. However, a group of artists has filed a class action lawsuit against four AI companies that manufacture art generators, alleging copyright infringement.

Sharin Alfonsi: Some artists claim that the use of these images is theft. What do you say to that?

Refik Anadolu: I completely agree with all my artist friends. I know what that means and as an artist I only use my own data.

Refik Anadol said that since 2020, he has only worked with what he calls “ethically sourced” datasets.

Sharin Alfonsi: What does that mean?

Refik Anadol: So this is the most important part of creating art with AI. It takes a lot of teamwork, a lot of thinking and research. We always start with permissions and understand exactly where the information is coming from.

Anadolu is currently building a 20,000-square-foot museum dedicated to “AI art” in downtown Los Angeles called DATALAND, a giant canvas celebrating his optimism about technology. Anadolu argues that AI is not a threat, but rather a tool to create art that humans alone cannot create.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Some people say that AI can never create true art because it lacks emotion, it lacks lived experience, it lacks intention.

Refik Anadolu: Yes. These are all things I think are true. That’s why I believe collaboration between humans and machines is necessary. We are just completing that bridge and it feels the closest to where we are headed as a species. Let’s make sure it’s done right, shared right, and celebrate this new era of imagination.

Produced by Michael Baltierra. Associate Producers Erin Ducharme and Chrissy Hallowell. Edited by Craig Crawford.

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