Some artists, museums embrace AI art; others call it a gimmick | 60 Minutes
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
When thinking about art creation, traditional images include painters, photographers, or sculptors in studios. Now, a person uses a computer screen with artificial intelligence and data to create visuals. Prestigious museums, critics, and auction houses debate if this is art. Some artists call AI a revolutionary new medium; others call it theft.
Visited Rafi Anodol, 40-year-old Turkish American artist, pioneer in AI art, at his LA studio. Immersive space with images created using AI: hypnotic flow of shapes and colors morphing on mirrors and LED screens, surrounded by viewers. Not real birds. Feels like Alice in Wonderland in Studio 54. Device around neck pumps AI-generated scents like rain and flowers. Eventually, device will monitor vital statistics like heartbeat to change art in real time.
I don't think so. I feel like it's a new form of art like we are discovering a new place that never been before.
Anodol's massive images projected on Las Vegas Sphere, Walt Disney Concert Hall facade in Los Angeles, Antonio Gaudi's Casa Batllo in Barcelona.
When people ask you what you do, what do you say? So, I'm a media artist, and I'm using data and AI in my work. More than 16 years, I paint with a thinking brush.
Thinking brush: information and data around us has its own voice. Does not do traditional painting, drawing, sculpting. Computes and imagines geometrically in mind's eye.
Uses vast data: 200 million photos of Earth from NASA for pieces. Data as pigment that doesn't dry, moves in any shape, form, color, texture.
It is trippy because I think as artists we ask, what is beyond reality?
Demonstration with gaming controller controlling algorithm. Team curated 153 million images for California landscapes piece. Flying in dataset of nature, flora, fauna. Each image converted to data points for color, texture, shape, plotted in multi-dimensional space. AI learns from this to create new versions from prompts—images exist only in mind of machine. Not real place; AI dreaming this world, reshaping together. Applies algorithms to blend into fluid style.
Are you a computer programmer or are you an artist? I am an artist, but I love computers. But now with AI, I feel like I have now programmed it in a way that I never imagined before. How much of this is driven by you and how much by the machine? I try my very best last 10 years to make a 50% machine 50% human.
Treats AI as co-creator.
Teamed with Google, MIT, Microsoft for public installations. Sold pieces for upwards of $1 million at auction. Exhibited at museums worldwide. In 2022, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York commissioned Unsupervised, colossal 24ft high installation filling MoMA lobby. Trained on publicly available metadata of entire MoMA collection (digital DNA describing art). Algorithms allow data from one object to evolve into another, creating never-before-seen objects.
It was a utter extraordinary hit. People sat in front of it for hours, literally transfixed by what they were seeing. It's an amazing painting.
Glenn Lowry, MoMA director for three decades (retired September), on public reaction. Typical museum visitors spend 28 seconds on great works; for Unsupervised, 38 minutes.
Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine:
It's like a giant lava lamp that you can't take your eyes off. It's like an etch a sketch. Half million dollar screen saver splashing.
On 38 minutes viewing time:
Popularity is not the sign of success. How long you spend with a work of art is not a sign of success so much as your willingness to get quiet within yourself. Go to uncomfortable places, become comfortable in those places, asking yourself questions in front of a Rafi Anodol. You sit down, go into a stupor, and you don't have to think much. You go, "Oh, there goes a painting that looks a little like Renoir morphing into one that looks like Picasso, morphing into an amoeba. It's something to look at. Is it art?
AI is art. AI will be art. But AI has a long way to go. AI is one day old... Most of what you see in AI is crap. 90% crap. But 90% of the art made during the Renaissance was also crap. Things take time. Works of art that challenge you are always going to be misunderstood by many at first.
Glenn Lowry: Skepticism mirrors reaction to photography 200 years ago, when human hand removed from image-making. AI analogous; cannot stop technology.
Molly Crabapple, New York-based artist and author, opposes AI in art world:
You've called this the greatest art heist in history. Yes. When we talk about art heist, typically we're talking about one painting being taken from a museum, two, three. They stole billions and billions of images.
Museums, galleries, auction houses shouldn't buy/display AI art trained on other artists' work without consent. Calls popular AI generators "corporate plagiarism bots" trained on art scraped from web, including hers. Example: Her illustration of Aleppo, Syria skyline; AI generator prompted for "Syrian skyline in the style of Molly Crabapple" produced strikingly similar image in seconds. No consent, compensation, or credit given.
AI companies claim fair use; AI studies like human. Group of artists filed class action lawsuit against four AI companies making art generators, accusing copyright infringement.
Rafi Anodol:
I completely agree. All my artist friends, I know what they mean, and as an artist, I only use my own data.
Since 2020, uses ethically sourced datasets: starts with permission, knows data origins. Requires teamwork, thinking, research.
Building 20,000 square foot museum dedicated to AI art in downtown Los Angeles called Dataland, with massive screens.
AI not threat but tool to create art no human could alone. Lacks emotion, lived experience, intent—that's why human-machine collaboration completes the bridge.
We are really completing that bridge where I feel like most likely where we are going as humanity and just be sure that it's done right, it is shared right and celebrate this new age of imagination.
Get immersed in Anodol's AI work and decide: is it art? At 60minutesovertime.com.
Keep 60 Minutes in your library
Save the videos and channels worth coming back to, and find them again in one place.
