“An insult to any artist”. A version made using artificial intelligence of one of the most illustrious works in the history of painting, The Girl with a Pearl Earring of Vermeer, is currently creating controversy. The decision to exhibit this work is indeed causing controversy in the Netherlands and on social networks: does AI have its place in a museum, which notably brings together classic works by Vermeer and Rembrandt?
The work in an artificial intelligence (AI) version is part of an exhibition at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, bringing together reproductions of fans of The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer (1665), currently on loan to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for an eventful retrospective on the Dutch painter.
Two earrings instead of one
At first glance, we find the luminosity so characteristic of the original painting and the emblematic gaze of the young girl, but on closer inspection, strange details jump out. This young girl has not just one earring but two, one on each side, sparkling, and freckles of a shade of red strewn on her face.
Berlin-based digital designer Julian van Dieken made the image for the Mauritshuis ‘My Girl with a Pearl Earring’ competition, calling on people to send in their version of the famous painting. He used the AI tool Midjourney, which can generate complex images using millions of images from the internet, and Photoshop. She was selected from one of the five creations – out of the 3,482 submitted – exhibited in the room where the real one usually sits Girl with a Pearl Earring.
“An incredible shame and insult”
Selecting an AI-generated image causes a stir. Dutch artist Iris Compiet said on the museum’s Instagram page of the exhibition that it was “an incredible shame and insult”. An opinion shared by dozens of other Internet users on social networks.
“It’s an insult to Vermeer’s legacy and also to any working artist. Coming from a museum, it’s a real slap in the face,” comparing the image to Frankenstein’s monster, adds Iris Compiet. She believes that AI tools violate the copyright of other artists, by using their works as the basis for artificially generated images, and using photos of Internet users.
It is an “unethical technology”, considers for its part the artist Eva Toorenent, who works for the regulation of AI. “Without the work of human artists, this program simply could not generate works,” she said, quoted by the Dutch daily From Volkskrant.
“We think it’s a creative process”
“It’s controversial, so people are for or against it,” observes Boris de Munnick, press officer for the Mauritshuis. “The people who selected the work, they liked it, they knew it was AI but we liked the creation, so we chose it, and we hung it” on the wall, he explains.
“What is art and what is not? also asks Boris de Munnick, adding that the Mauritshuis had not deliberately sought to open the debate. “We think it’s a beautiful image, we think it’s a creative process,” and “we’re not the (kind of) museum to discuss whether AI has a place in an art museum.”