The internet has been flooded with AI-generated images for quite some time now, but surely no one is confusing these weird, viral images with true artistic masterpieces?
If there is any confusion, it seems to be from the internet itself. Google was caught placing AI imitations of famous paintings at the very top of its search results, according to a report published in Futurism.
First, it happened when art lovers typed in “Edward Hopper,” which returned an image of a woman staring wistfully out of a window. The work had some familiar qualities of the legendary American artist’s work, evoking themes of isolation, introspection and confinement within a domestic interior. Nonetheless, its flat, artificial sheen was a very poor imitation of Hopper’s brushwork.
Other glaring flaws included an oddly pronounced red ear, forearms and fingers that blend into each other, and nothing to see outside the window beyond an odd yellow haze.
Now it seems that if you want to check out the works of old Dutch master Vermeer, you’ll be greeted by an eerily photorealistic version of his A girl with an earring (c. 1665) before scrolling down to see the real deal.
Vermeer’s impostor was, in fact, actively endorsed by the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands, which owns the original. The museum had invited fans to produce their own imitations of the work as stand-ins while it was on loan to the Rijksmuseum, and this version, known as A girl with shiny earrings, was generated by German AI artist Julian van Dieken. Its public display caused considerable controversy.
After the Hopper’s AI tribute was discovered at the top of Google’s results, the company worked hard to fix the problem, but it seems they weren’t able to prevent it from happening. reproduce with another artist. For now, these AI-generated fakes fool Google’s algorithm, but are still easy to identify and ignore for most people. However, as the tools become more sophisticated, we can only guess what kind of confusion might lie in wait.
“We’re rolling out new tools to help people quickly and easily assess the context and credibility of images, including our ‘About This Image’ tool as well as markup-based image labels for images generated by AI,” a Google spokesperson said. Futurism. “Given the breadth of the open web, however, our systems may not always select the best images, regardless of how those images are produced, AI-generated or not.”
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