Zita Campbell
Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’ and Molly Crabapple’s work to protect the intellectual property of creatives, ‘A Day at the Gallery’ (ADATG) is a short film directed, filmed, and edited by Zita Campbell (Benjamin, Crabapple). It encourages the viewer to think about the future of creative jobs and human-made art in a world increasingly dominated by AI.
As AI image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E become ever more capable of copying iconic art styles and churning out better and better images, the question arises of what exactly this means for working artists. Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, stated in an interview in 2023, ‘some creative jobs might… go away but maybe those jobs shouldn’t have been there in the first place’ (‘AI Everywhere’ 29:32 ).
Self-proclaimed ‘AI artist’ and photographer Craig Boehman defends his works, which he generates by prompting Midjourney with specific text prompts, describing how AI can help bring to life artistic visions, which he does not have time to photograph himself (Boehman). Boehman’s post and many others like it frame AI art as a project of originality. Yet the processes used to train these generators might reveal otherwise.
Under UK law, from the moment of creation or ‘fixation’ of a work of art, that work becomes the intellectual property of its creator (Wimbledon Art Studios). Importantly, AI generators cannot create anything new; they must be trained on huge datasets often containing millions of works of art and original writing, including news articles, fiction, and poetry. The New York Times made history in 2023, becoming the first major news outlet to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its journalism to train bots (Grynbaum and Mac). The Times claims AI has not only become a competitor in the online news space, but is doing so by stealing the intellectual property of the paper and its journalists without compensating them. While the Times lawsuit is an admirable step towards clearer legal boundaries for AI companies, many working artists continue to suffer as AI begins to replace the work of contract or freelance creatives (Knight et al.).
To put into perspective the absolute reliance AI has on the datasets on which it is trained, it might be helpful to ask, what if a bot gets trained only on the work of a single artist? As Fabian Offert states in their discussion of ‘The Past, Present, and Future of AI Art,’ an image generator ‘trained on Van Gogh paintings will certainly produce interesting variations of Van-Gogh-like images, but it will never produce an image that, let’s say, reflects on the art historical context of Van Gogh’s aesthetics (Impressionism). [AI] can never distance itself from the data it operates on, as this data is its entire world, not just one of many subsets of the world, as it is for the human observer’ (Offert). Offert’s 2019 article presents this as evidence that the widespread utilisation of AI-generated images will wear off as the realisation dawns that the ‘art’ lacks any novelty. Yet as image and video generating software has become widely accessible, the opposite has happened. As brain-rot inducing animations that collect millions of views flood social media feeds, the ‘novelty’ of this content is still very much present (Tenbarge).
What, then, are the implications for the ‘humanness’ of art? To what extent can an AI image generator produce an original work? More importantly, if it is using only the intellectual property of other artists in its creation process, can what it creates even be considered art?
German philosopher Walter Benjamin, in his influential essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, claims that each original piece of human-made art gets imbued with an aura that resists reproduction. While one might photograph a painting and print it in a magazine, its properties of ‘creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery’ become ‘neutralised’ (20). Other scholars have used Benjamin’s work in discussions of the authenticity of AI works, yet many have argued in the opposite vein to ADATG, taking Benjamin’s discussion of aura and authenticity as grounds for the redefinition of art in a way which allows for an aura to attach itself to AI images. For example, scholar Sungjin Park suggests that ‘the transformation of aura in AI art necessitates a redefinition of authenticity, shifting it from the human creator to the uniqueness of the algorithmic process and its outcomes’ (1808).
In contrast to this, ADATG takes the viewer on a seemingly ordinary trip to the Scottish National Gallery, interrupted by the claim that AI both replaces analogue artistic practices and democratises art for the individual. In response, ADATG takes a literal look at AI’s process of artistic creation through the eating of an authentic Van Gogh and the defecation of its poorer AI counterpart in the final sequence of the film. ADATG raises questions about the true artistic value of AI images. Can AI ever be a democratising force in artistic creation if everything it makes is a poor imitation of stolen works of human-made art?
The goal of this film is to act as a catalyst for discussion about the future of human and AI-made art, and to raise awareness about how widely accessible AI image generators can produce the images they do. This film benefited from the comments of test audiences who provided feedback on the clarity of the film’s message, particularly ensuring the quotes utilised delivered a clear message to the viewer.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version.’ The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 19–55.
Boehman, Craig. ‘In Defense of AI Art.’ Craig Boehman, Jun. 13, https://craigboehman.com/blog/in-defense-of-ai-art.
‘Copyright and Intellectual Property Laws as a UK Artist: Why It’s Essential to Protect Your Work.’ Wimbledon Art Studios, https://www.wimbledonartstudios.co.uk/articles/copyright-intellectual-property-law-uk-artist.
Crabapple, Molly. ‘Restrict AI Illustration from Publishing: An Open Letter.’ Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting, 2 May. 2023, https://artisticinquiry.org/AI-Open-Letter.
Grynbaum, Michael, and Ryan Bell. ‘The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work.’ The New York Times, 27 Dec. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html.
Knight, Lucy, et al. ‘The Big AI Job Swap: Why White-Collar Workers Are Ditching Their Careers.’ The Guardian, 11 Feb. 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/11/big-ai-job-swap-white-collar-workers-ditching-their-careers.
Murati, Mira. ‘AI Everywhere: Transforming Our World, Empowering Humanity.’ Dartmouth Engineering, 19 Jun. 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUoj9B8OpR8&t=74s.
Offert, Fabian. ‘The Past, Present, and Future of AI Art.’ The Gradient, 18 Jun. 2019, https://thegradient.pub/the-past-present-and-future-of-ai-art/.
Park, Sungjin. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Generative AI: Aura, Liberation, and Democratization.’ AI & Society, vol. 40, no. 3, Mar. 2025, pp. 1807–16.
Tenbarge, Kat. ‘There’s Something Very Dark About a Lot of Those Viral AI Fruit Videos.’ Wired, 25 Mar. 2026, https://www.wired.com/story/theres-something-very-dark-about-a-lot-of-those-viral-ai-fruit-videos/.
Cite this page:
Campbell, Zita. 'A Day at the Gallery'. Cream of the Slop. version 1.0, Digital Humanities for Literary Studies 2025-26, University of Edinburgh, 10 Apr. 2026, https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/dh2025-26/.
