Vienna tourist board is using AI-generated spinoffs of famous artwork to entice people to check out the real thing

It’s hard to believe Vienna’s tourist board is behind a new series of bizarre AI-generated spin-offs of some of Austria’s most iconic works of art featuring the Internet’s favorite animal, the cat.

However, once they have caught our attention with these viral images, the city offers a different proposition: visit Vienna and “discover the art behind the art of AI”.

“With so much artificial intelligence invading lives, especially with programs like DALL-E or Midjourney allowing anyone to create ‘works of art’, Vienna wants to remind visitors who made it all possible first. place”, explained the tourist office. CEO, Norbert Kettner, in a press release.

The tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign risks significant backlash, as has been the case for other cultural institutions venturing into AI, such as the San Francisco Ballet and the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands.

Vienna Non-Artificial Art Campaign. Photo: © Vienna Tourist Board, Michael Nagle.

Despite these good intentions, the campaign has seen fit to address each Modernist master by their first name, issuing slightly flippant apologies for the mutation of their work. “Sorry Egon, but your art has made AI art possible,” reads a Schiele-style image of a decidedly crestfallen-looking feline. Another offers sincere condolences to Gustav (Klimt) for scam The kiss (1907–08).

The council also publishes a video in which art historian Markus Hübl introduces us to the world-renowned masterpieces of Schiele, Klimt and Bruegel, before offering a wacky and comedic scientific analysis of their brain-generated derivative. ‘IA.

If the campaign is successful, it will encourage the rapidly growing audience of AI-generated images to redirect their attention to reality, which can be found in Vienna’s famous cultural institutions: the Belvedere, the Kunsthistoriches, the Albertina and the Leopold Museum, to name but a few. some. There they can learn about the radical achievements of the Viennese Secession, co-founded by Klimt in 1897.

“The Viennese Modernism movement that revolutionized the art world more than a century ago continues to live on and affect art today through the algorithms that guide AI creations” , Kettner said.

Check out more AI creations from the Vienna Tourist Board below.

Bruegel, Babel Tower (c.1563) and AI image generated on Midjourney by Vienna Tourist Board. Photos: © Kunsthistorisches Museum and Vienna Tourist Board.

Gustave Klimt, Beethoven fries, (1901/02) to the Secession. Photo courtesy of Vienna Tourist Board.

Image inspired by Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, generated in 2023 using Midjourney by Vienna Tourist Board.

Colorful facade of Hundertwasserhaus, building designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser in Vienna, Wien, Austria. Photo: Petr Svarc/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.