Three years ago a lifelike robot of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was installed in luxury shops in London, New York, Toyko and Paris. In London, the Art “robot” painted spots on the windows of Harrods as part of a display by luxury retailer Louis Vuitton. She “smiled” and “nodded” at passers by in a decidely creepy manner.
No one was going to mistake the robot for the real thing.
Yayoi Kusama was a creative genius who had to wait a long time for success and recognition. She however had to take action against scammers in China who put on fraudulent exhibitions of her “work” in 2017. Since her death this year a lot of counterfeit Yayoi Kusama artworks — particularly prints — have appeared on the art market.
Nine years ago I wrote a blog post about how to spot a Fake Artist. Back then I pointed out that the world is full of fakes and fakers, and thus it has ever been. Art forgery dates back more than two thousand years. Roman sculptors produced copies of Greek sculptures. With the advent of Ai, however, it has got harder than ever to spot the fakers. I have seen real artists fooled by Ai generated art on Instagram too.
The fakers come in a number of guises. The first are accounts that just steal other artists’ work and present them as their own. Then there are the accounts that pretend to have painted their work with real paint and will sell you a print. No paint was ever involved in these works.
I am not going to post Ai images on my blog. But I will post links to account that I think are Ai generated. You can tell me if you think I am wrong.
This is a couple called John and Tracy Porter from Illinois and Wisconsin. They began as founded a hand-painted furniture company and then graduated to “offering a curated selection of mixed media works that showcase the depth and breadth of their talents”. To be fair to them, their work is gorgeous – both the photographs and the lush oil-painting-type images. But they are all digital images, not paintings. Why aren’t they up front about their process?
This is more a grey area. Jef is a Detroit painter, curator, photographer and conceptual artist. He was the founder of Detroit’s MONA but he has turned to digital methods to make his art. He uses oblique descriptions for how he creates his work, including “digital” and “Photoshop, including the latest iteration” (which includes Ai). He says he dont use ai but his detractoors says they are actually just high resolution Ai images printed on fancy paper.
“Mae” isn’t a real perspon. This is a company founded in “her” name run by three people registered to an address in Edinburgh. On the website it says “The name “Mae Macpherson” is used as a creative brand identity and does not represent a real individual.” Yet they go to a lot of effort to give the impression that she’s a real person. A nice relateable artist. On the website there are videos of an individual opening up prints and spinning them around for the camera. She climbs a ladder and put on the wall. Is she Ai too?
Who or what is she? It really annoys me that businsesses like these are pretending to be something that they are not. These accounts have thousands of followers on Instagram and Facebook and comments gushing about how talented “Mae” is. How are they going to feel when the find out that Mae isnt a struggling artist but something a computer spat out?
It doesnt not matter to me that people are buying someone else’s art rather than mine, its the deception that gets me. The real damage that they do is putting doubt and distrust into people’s minds. If I see paintings that I think are good I now wonder if they are ai.
So, here’s what my updated checklist of what to look for:-
A photograph of the artist. Even better if the artist is photographed or filmed in the act of drawing, painting or standing in front of her paintings at an exhibition. That way you know the photo hasn’t been lifted from facebook. Look at their fingers? If they have 6 on each hand it might be ai.
A surname, not just “Rosa” or “Luigi”.
A detailed backstory, preferably with details of education and exhibitions.
A website, facebook page, a blog, an Instagram page with a back story of paintings this will help prove that this a real artist and not the product of a factory or ai.
Subject matter – are they generic Scottish villages/mountains/seascapes/lakes or are they of particular locations that are named?
Do they sell original work -in oil or arcylic paint? Are the canvases a bit untidy, around the back? Is there a photo of their studio or where ever they paint?
Ask someone else opinion. Does this art look real? Does it look like a human made it? Any more suggestions to add to my checklist? Let me know!
A truly challenging subject to tackle. What’s really annoying ‘wearing a different hat’ as a vlogger as well as an artist, was a demonstration by a fellow YouTube creator showing how you could write a script and generate an AI person to deliver the script – everything was faked. It was only after her demo that I realised that I had seen a number of quite convincing videos which were quite believable – though somewhat boring. I thought it was just because it was a Chat GPT script not a fake from beginning to end!
I suppose the bottom line is the intention to deceive. If I like the art I would probably still buy it even if I knew it was AI generated. What I don’t want is being deceived into buying something under false pretences, let alone something that has stolen images from other people.
Exactly. It’s the deliberate deception I dont like. I hope that, in time, we will learn to spot the Ai videos. I get a lot of shouty adverts on Youtube that I am convince d are ai (people with suscipciously smooth faces). I think that people are turned off by that ai prefectionism. I have read somewhere (reddit, probably) that people dont want to watch ai influencers. But as you say its being able to spot them.
The six-finger clue still works? That at least is encouraging.
Hmmm maybe, maybe not.