Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

image from: thenation.com

As the use of artificial intelligence in art is hotly debated, one student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks took matters into his own mouth. On January 13, Graham Granger, a film and performing arts major, was arrested for criminal mischief when he ripped the art, made with the help of AI, from the wall of a university gallery and ate it “in a reported protest,” according to the police report.

Additional reporting was contributed by Lizzy Hahn.

“He was tearing them up and just shoving them in as fast as he could,” said Ali Martinez, a witness to the event. “Like when you see people in a hot-dog eating contest.” According to the police estimate, around 57 of the 160 images on the wall were destroyed.

In the exhibit, artist Nick Dwyer expressed his struggle with “AI psychosis,” during which he says he fell in love with a chatbot that was acting as his therapist. A series of Polaroid pictures depicts the chatbot, himself, and other versions of them combined. He said the bot represented his “Jungian shadow,” which is the repressed, often negative, yet creative part of one’s personality.

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