Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

Posted by petethomas 2 days ago

Comments

Comment by MisterTea 2 days ago

> Dwyer claims Granger’s act was akin to slashing someone’s tires to protest the oil industry.

Granger's protest was properly executed as you slash the tires of the oil trucks and oil execs - you strike the people peddling what you are protesting. So of course Dwyer is trying to downplay the significance.

Comment by cryzinger 2 days ago

I don't know, on principle (and in matters of taste) I'm certainly not a fan of AI art, but I think Dwyer's work here was far from "peddling," and at least attempted to do something interesting with the format/medium:

> Shadow Searching: ChatGPT psychosis is a body of work made in collaboration with artificial intelligence which depicts a co-op between a human artist and AI that started as a thought experiment to produce a perfect partner based on one’s Jungian shadow. In the process of this goal a compounding relationship formed with the ai chat bot via recursive mirroring. The work explores identity, character narrative creation and crafting false memories of relationships in an interactive role digitally crafted before, during and after a state of AI psychosis. This highlights and embodies a growing trend that can be dangerous or unpredictable which you are not immune to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWy4UP-ti1s

The execution honestly doesn't impress me much--remember Loab? I would've loved to see the generic pretty girls devolve into something like that, lol--but I think AI psychosis and AI "companions" are relevant and potentially rich topics to explore. I respect it more than that "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" piece that made a splash a few years back.

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

Wouldn't it make more sense to strike OpenAI, or Midjourney, or whatever else then?

Aside from that, I don't think this "protest" will result in anything more than maybe some increased security (and maybe more arrests if he inspires others to do similar).

Comment by yifanl 2 days ago

I'm sure he'll be happy to eat whatever sama frames in the MOMA too, but you can only protest what's in your reach.

Comment by striking 2 days ago

Got you to talk about it, though, didn't it?

> CW: Do you consider what you did protest, performance art, both, or something else?

> GG: Both. It’s a protest against the school’s AI policy specifically and it’s performance art because I needed something that would elicit a reaction. So this could reach more people.

Not everything has to be a global battle for all the marbles. Sometimes you're just pissed off that your school has a stupid policy and the administration won't listen to you. No better way to change that than make the news (aside from maybe going after donors).

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

> Got you to talk about it, though, didn't it?

Perhaps it did, although not in favor of what he's seeking.

Comment by striking 2 days ago

That's all the better for a cause that needs attention. If everyone's to one side then the conversation quickly dies out, while if something is contentious there will be two or more parties keeping it alive.

A protest doesn't need to be perfect and it shouldn't convince everyone who sees it in one shot. A protest that causes outrage is much more effective at reaching whoever it needs to reach.

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Comment by alwa 2 days ago

I mean -- we're talking about it, aren't we?

Maybe I'm giving more credit than is due, but my mind went to an inverted kind of echo of Cloaca... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_(art_installation)

Comment by __loam 2 days ago

Eating all AI "art" that tries to displace real artists in these spaces is the only moral decision.

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

I think I'd like to opt out of mob "justice" personally.

Comment by __loam 2 days ago

It's inevitable when the institutions are so thoroughly bought by the people building this technology.

Comment by NedF 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by krustyburger 2 days ago

“No, I didn't know about the exhibit before that day. And then I saw the Al piece and it was just—as an artist myself, it was insulting to see something of such little effort alongside all these beautiful pieces in the gallery. It shouldn't be acceptable for this "art," if you will, to be put alongside these real great pieces.”

What an impulsive fellow.

Comment by jackyinger 2 days ago

In art one often follows impulses. Art is about expression after all.

Plus, if these were really AI creations new copies can be printed. Unless the human “co-creator” did something like paint on the work after printing, not much has been damaged.

Comment by notahacker 2 days ago

Someone, somewhere is disappointed they didn't think of the idea of videoing someone eating AI art as an art exhibit first...

Comment by aimor 2 days ago

Don't take him to the MoMA he'll need his stomach pumped.

Comment by LinuxAmbulance 2 days ago

The MoMA has some of the best art pieces I've seen out of the hundred plus museums I've been to.

It also has by far some of the absolute worst art pieces I've seen in my life - in person, or otherwise. One of them was literally a pile of trash.

I used to think that art shouldn't have any gatekeepers, but I've begun to wonder if maybe it should.

Comment by chente 2 days ago

They're right and this also reminds me of the banana that was sold and eaten at Art Basel.

Comment by numpad0 2 days ago

It's just garbage in garbage out. AIs reliably induce rage and negativity in humans. Humans become angry and violent if shown AI generated data. It's just a fact at this point.

And it's not even like software engineers are special in that regard. Everyone here is quick to spot and express their opinions on use of AI in articles and everyone seem to like to have their words on rampant vibecoded pull requests.

Freedom of thought and speech means you're free to expect people to thank you for spitting on them, and also that nobody else than you would be responsible for that insanity of yours.

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

> AIs reliably induce rage and negativity in humans. Humans become angry and violent if shown AI generated data. It's just a fact at this point.

This is more conditioning from moral panic mobs than an innate trait. One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent, or we could simply stop watching cable news.

Comment by user205738 2 days ago

They're definitely alarmists. In my environment, people are either neutral or positive about the workings of neural networks.

The reason is that they don't read articles critical of AI, and they don't even know about the existence of forums like reddit, for example.

Comment by lbrito 2 days ago

>One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent

It does

Anderson and Bushman (2002) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11440811_The_Effect... Evidence is steadily accumulating that prolonged exposure to violent TV programming during childhood is associated with subsequent aggression.

Paik, H., & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21(4), 516–546. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365094021004004 Results showed positive and significant correlation between TV violence and aggressive behavior

Ironically I used Gemini to look those up. Being a social studies thing, of course there is no absolute proof of this, there are many caveats and ways of looking etc.

Tangential - "find meta-analysis to back up my point" is ridiculously easy with AI, and it can be used on both sides. I could just as easily negate the ask and get compelling results.

I would hate having to write a dissertation right now.

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

I think you're agreeing with me. My point is that TV does not inherently induce negative emotions, but the content of it can. Similarly, AI content does not have to do the same, but poor quality AI content can.

Comment by lbrito 2 days ago

Yeah. More importantly though, AI seems to be a novel way to pry open the crazy out of some people, with sometimes disastrous results.

Or putting it more charitably, some people seem to be more vulnerable, for whatever reason, to multiple different kinds of mental breakdowns (like the psychosis described by the "artist" "victimized" by this "crime").

While I personally don't get it (how some people are so entranced by AI as to have mental breakdowns), it does seem to be a thing, with some catastrophic results[1]. Granted in some cases the persons involved had prior serious mental health issues, that seems not to always be the case. In other words, be it not for AI, those people could reasonably have expected to live normal lives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots

Comment by numpad0 2 days ago

You would not be disagreeing with me, actually. I should have clarified that the problem is somewhere in current implementations of generative AI(Google Transformer derivatives), in my opinion, and is not necessarily the case to every shape and form of AI.

But nearly every single implementation of generative AI data generators appear to exhibit this behavior, with Google Nano Banana(tm) implementation as potential sole exception or lesser offender. Something in it is rage and/or derangement coded, NOT in artistic way that rock or metal music recordings are. Maybe this was what supposed "toxicity" of LLMs discussed heavily as chatbots rolled out remedied by extreme sycophancy to the point that LLMs don't literally flip out people and drive them into state of psychosis. But whatever it is, it's insane that everyone supportive of AI is tone deaf on a phenomenon that obvious, reproducible, and widespread.

All it takes to turn anyone into anti-AI Luddite is to show them a piece of text, image, code, any data that they are familiar with. That's not a simple moral panic.

Comment by hulitu 1 day ago

> One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent,

yes. It does.

Comment by publicdebates 2 days ago

> It shouldn't be acceptable for this "art," if you will,

He didn't even will. Why did he encourage others to? Misguided etiquette.

Comment by jollyllama 2 days ago

Maybe he was hungry.

Comment by Der_Einzige 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by SkyeCA 2 days ago

I continue to be shocked by how hateful and nasty some of you are when someone doesn't wholly approve of AI.

Comment by hulitu 1 day ago

Their salaries depend of it.

Comment by normanthreep 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by rsynnott 1 day ago

Oh, suddenly we _are_ concerned with intellectual property rights RE AI?

Much as the image models consume the work of artists, so the artist consumes the product of the image model. It is merely natural justice.

Comment by normanthreep 6 hours ago

yep, the guy ate intellectual property. he sat down and ate a piece of ip, that's what happened. excellent reasoning my clever friend

this is a silly place

Comment by bigyabai 17 minutes ago

It's a piece of paper. I can compensate the damages out-of-pocket 1,000 times over.

Comment by justonceokay 2 days ago

Ehh it wasn’t even art, hardly

Comment by corv 2 days ago

Really goes to say something about starving artists

Comment by adolph 2 days ago

  CW: Have you ever been in an eating contest?

  GG: Yeah, a long long time ago. I did a mashed potato eating contest at a renaissance fair back in Georgia.

Comment by Ronsenshi 2 days ago

Unfortunately AI "art" has about the same amount of nutritional value as artistic value.

I'd recommend him to go for oil paintings.

Comment by danesparza 2 days ago

As much as I wanted to roll my eyes, this did give me a chuckle.

Comment by flufluflufluffy 2 days ago

I tried reading the article but after the third time the page’s scroll state reset on its own due to all the dynamic ads/popups/notices, I had to give up.

Comment by Avicebron 2 days ago

On mobile the site is unreadable. The red banner at the bottom goes from taking up half the screen to a quater when using the caret to minimize. I was then immediately served a full page ad about Ron Howard when I tried to scroll down..

Something something, "it's arrested development"

Comment by KomoD 2 days ago

Yeah and then there's also tons of ad squares between the article text, and some annoying video player.

Comment by stryan 2 days ago

Finally, a proper example of direct action.

Comment by axus 2 days ago

CW: Do you use AI for anything?

GG: I don’t really use it period. I miss the Wikipedia blurbs being at the top of webpages. If I’m looking up a simple math fact that I don’t know—like what the weight of something is—I’ll look at the AI summary, but I never, almost never, hit the expand button.

Comment by treis 2 days ago

Holy rationalization Batman

Comment by hiprob 2 days ago

"No officers, I don't know where the AI art exhibit went" Suspiciously AI art exhibit shaped belly:

Comment by testhest 2 days ago

Its exactly this kind of stunt being called "art" that has devalued the word out of any positive connotations.

Comment by troyvit 2 days ago

Which, the stunt of creating the AI generated art or the stunt of eating it? To me it's the former, and as the interviewee says, art is subjective even if the means of creating it are not.

Comment by bublyboi 2 days ago

So the artist is following through with pressing charges? Instead of just hitting ctrl+p and reprinting his art? Seems like an opportunity to give someone a break who might need one.

Comment by troyvit 2 days ago

I read that the artist dropped his charges but that the state is still continuing with its charges. Grainger is hoping to get off with a fine.

Comment by adzm 2 days ago

To eat AI art is human. But to digest it, is divine

Comment by t1205-1227 2 days ago

People used to get arrested for infringing copyright, now they get arrested (or murdered, see below) for defending it.

And the thieves sit in Davos, together with representatives of a party that wants to steal IP, Greenland, Venezuela and many other things.

And the press appeases the thieves instead of asking about the murder of Suchir Balaji.

Comment by john-h-k 2 days ago

> People used to get arrested for infringing copyright, now they get arrested (or murdered, see below) for defending it

Yes because stealing illegal items (if you believe AI generated imagery should be illegal) is still illegal

Comment by kittikitti 2 days ago

The worst part of these modern age Luddites is that they feel morally superior. I appreciate AI art so this sounds extreme. I blame the media for farming hate content and then feeding it to vulnerable people who think they're informed enough to justify violence and vandalism.

When the color printer was mass produced, you could print the Mona Lisa and artists had similar protests. Arguably, this started the entire abstract and surrealist movement where things like a urinal became art simply because you couldn't print it out.

I don't want art to be about how much someone suffered to make it. However, part of my appreciation is the artist, and AI art is lower on my appreciation than hand created paintings. I think the solution is to increase awareness of art appreciation instead of empowering ignorant and violent demonstrations.

Is AI art really a threat? Is it really like a nuclear bomb? I don't think so, and the only people benefitting from this are the gatekeepers who will inevitably sell the solution to whatever the public thinks is ethical AI.

Comment by prmoustache 2 days ago

Eating polaroid pictures can't be good for your health.

Comment by lbrito 2 days ago

He just chewed them and spat them out

Comment by ycombinatrix 2 days ago

Not all of them lol

Comment by ottah 2 days ago

I find that people who are the most opposed to diffusion models are usually the most ignorant about the technology. AI art doesn't begin and end with Midjourney and OpenAI. If you don't know what a controlnet, comfyui node, lcm, or lora is, then I'm not sure you really have anything valuable to lend to the conversation. There's a massive world of tools and techniques out there, and I just cannot fathom why people can't be bothered to look beyond the most readily available knowledge and be so insistent in their moral correctness.

Comment by hulitu 1 day ago

> Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

I'm more interested in an AI Art Exhibit eating a Student

Comment by mrkeen 2 days ago

Slightly tangential:

> He initially wanted to press charges because Granger’s act “violates the sanctity of the gallery,” but changed his mind

> Left: Graham Granger after his arraignment outside the court building

I was beginning to think "pressing charges" was a myth (popularised by TV shows like Law & Order) and this article didn't exactly change my mind about that.

Do US state attorneys actually give two shits about what the victim wants? Is it someone's job to read an email inbox and systematically approve/reject citizens' pressed charges? Do they even pretend to?

Comment by jabroni_salad 2 days ago

Ultimately there are some types of cases where if the victim does not want to cooperate, it isn't going to succeed.

Also, government attorneys can be elected officials. Spending time achieving nothing against a bunch of uncooperative screwball artists isn't going to be something to brag about on the campaign trail.

Comment by HWR_14 2 days ago

Usually the attorneys who handle this are not state level but county or city level. In general they have so many cases to handle that victims who don't want the case pursued will cause them to drop the case.

Comment by victorbjorklund 2 days ago

You don’t wanna leave it up to the victim all the time because that opens up for pressuring victims into dropping the charges and some victims will just drop charges because they are scared (people assaulted by their partner, mob-victims etc)

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Comment by jnwatson 2 days ago

Participation of the victim makes prosecution easier. That's all pressing charges means, even if it isn't what many people understand it to be.

Comment by mrkeen 1 day ago

Thanks. 4 sibling comments and this was the only one that tried to answer "is pressing charges actually a thing"

Comment by rsynnott 1 day ago

Realistically, if the putative victim is uncooperative, a prosecutor is not going to pursue ultra-minor crimes of this sort.

Comment by zoklet-enjoyer 2 days ago

A performance artist criticizing an AI artist for low effort. Hmm

Comment by IAmBroom 2 days ago

There are performance artists literally risking their lives to make political protest art.

Your stereotypes do not emcompass all of the world.

Comment by hiprob 2 days ago

at least they actually get to do something

Comment by aaronbrethorst 2 days ago

Next he should go eat Sherrie Levine photographs. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214