Concerns about artificial intelligence are growing.
Florida’s House of Representatives is devoting the second week of December to state lawmakers studying its potential impact, continuing a debate about technology and art, particularly how AI is being trained using vast datasets of images collected from the internet without artists’ permission. This led to lawsuits against multiple AI companies over copyright concerns.
He recently attended one of North Florida’s biggest music festivals.
“The Oracle” was one of dozens of art installations at the Hulaween Music and Art Festival held at Live Oak over Halloween weekend. Big blue emotional eyes were projected onto the venue’s lake and answered questions from festival goers. It was promoted as a new AI work.
But according to creative director Justin Bolognino, Oracle was more Wizard of Oz than HAL 9000.
“It was me in front of the house with a microphone, speaking through a bunch of analog guitar effects,” he said.
He said his “Actual Intelligence” exhibit explained how AI is known to often give incomplete or inaccurate information and sometimes play with users’ emotions to get their attention.
One night, Bolognino acted sycophantic when answering questions. Other times, he started insulting guests’ questions and giving gibberish answers.
“One of my favorite moments was when a young punk asked me, ‘What does Six-Seven mean?’ I had a copy of the Dao Ching in my hand, so I went to verse 67 and read the whole passage,” he said.
Although the performance was a parody, Bolognino says real-life artificial intelligence influences his work. For example, how to design a large-scale immersive art exhibition or stage plan.
When designing the festival’s 360-degree no-go stage set to electronic music when it launches in 2024, he says his team used the AI platform Midjourney to create renderings and inspirational stage designs from a collection of sketches. The document created by Midjourney was used to pitch the design before collaborating with dozens of artists and creators to bring the concept to life.
“Do we have the budget to hire a high-level rendering artist? No, we didn’t. But we rely on Midjourney to do that, and that’s been a huge help,” he said.
Kevin Curry, a professor of sculpture and digital design at Florida State University, thinks the use of AI makes sense. He said AI is valuable as a tool for idea generation and suggestions.
“When a student or someone has formal training in a creative endeavor, whether it’s visual art or sculpture or creative writing or something like that, I think first of all they see it as an additional tool. In that sense, I don’t disagree with that. I think it’s very powerful for that, but it’s not something I want them or anyone to rely on exclusively,” he said.
However, Currie believes that ethical and technical issues can arise if art is generated entirely by AI, or if large-scale projects are planned using AI without experienced professionals working on the project who can fill in the gaps and add their own creative vision.
“I think a lot of people who jump into AI are trying to get into AI without having that background or information,” he says.
“Even if it looks good or works well, they haven’t learned anything about the process they’re doing.”
Mr. Curry’s classroom integrated assignments to convey this to his students. In one assignment, he had them model facial portraits. Another example lets you build a model using only AI prompts.
“No one had ever created a portrait that even remotely resembled them. It was well made as a picture of a human being, but it wasn’t them. It lacks the nuance of someone’s hand,” he said.
Bolognino said hundreds of people helped create the artwork at Hulaween. He sees the use of AI in the planning and concept stages as one tool to bring his work to life.
“AI as a tool is amazing, but as a medium it’s unacceptable,” he said.
