Critics of this AI-generated image posted to Facebook by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra say it ... [+]
What started as an orchestra’s attempt to entice audiences to a night of classical music has turned into yet another heated debate over AI-generated art.
The controversy follows a Facebook post by Australia’s Queensland Symphony Orchestra that features an image of a couple sitting in a concert hall with rows of violinists behind them. “Want to do something different this Saturday? Come see an orchestra play. We think you'll love it,” the QSO wrote alongside the headline “Experience the orchestra.”
Countered one Facebook user, “Experience hiring a goddamn photographer.”
It’s easy to spot AI’s imprint on the image, posted February 22. The guy’s fingers are oddly elongated and a piece of the woman’s diaphanous beige skirt appears to have split off from the rest of the garment and landed in her date’s lap.
But it’s not just the quality of the image that’s riled viewers.
“This is some of the worst AI generated artwork we’ve seen, but even worse is that it comes from an arts organization like the Queensland Symphony Orchestra that should be paying artists, not using AI,” the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance said in a March 4 Facebook response to the image. “It is inappropriate, unprofessional and disrespectful to audiences and the musicians of the QSO.”
MEAA describes itself as the largest and most established union and industry advocate for Australia’s creative professionals.
QSO, for its part, defended the photo. “Queensland Symphony Orchestra is a dynamic arts organization with a rich 77-year history and a strategic future focus,” it said in a statement. “We encourage exploration, innovation, experimentation and the adoption of new technologies across all facets of the business.”
That an AI-generated image has once again caused a stir shouldn’t come as a surprise. As generative AI finds its footing, it’s prompting reactions from excitement about the tool’s creative potential to worry it will steal artists’ work to train datasets, impact their livelihood and even alter creativity itself.
Last week brought news that Dutch metal band Pestilence unveiled a new cover for its latest album following an earlier version made with the help of artificial intelligence. Critics of the original album cover called it “lifeless,” “soulless” and “a big slap in the face to any real, living artists in the world.” Some fans, however, far preferred the first image.
The image posted by Queensland Symphony Orchestra generated similar mixed responses, with some on Facebook expressing outrage and others simply finding amusement in the image’s most distorted elements—“pretty sure this was attached to John Hurt’s face in Alien,” one person wrote of the couple’s odd-looking entwined hands. Some defended AI as a technology that should be embraced.
“It makes no sense at all to object to people using generative AI, and to call it somehow ‘disrespectful’ or ‘unprofessional,’” one wrote in response to MEAA’s criticism. “On what basis? The quality is the issue here, not the tool. Don't fear the future.”
The image reportedly comes from stock image company Shutterstock, which in October 2022 announced it would start selling images by OpenAI's Dall-E image generator in an expansion of the existing relationship between the two companies.
Turning up the volume on the pushback to QSO are reports that orchestra members themselves opposed the image.
Slipped Disc, which covers all things classical music, cited an inside source saying the picture caused an uproar among orchestra musicians, and that upon expressing their concerns to the QSO marketing department, they were were told to “stay in their lane” and that it’s “no one else’s job to market.’
If that marketing team abides by the saying “all publicity is good publicity,” there could be some high-fiving going around over there.
“Bravo QSO on the publicity this image has generated,” one viewer of the brouhaha observed on Facebook. “For all the naysayers I read this as a bit of fun.”
