A Wendell artist has pulled her work from the Deerfield Valley Art Association’s Fiddleheads Gallery over its policies pertaining to altered photographs, putting under a local microscope the larger debate surrounding art’s relationship with emerging technologies.
Christine Texiera removed her paintings and notecards from the gift shop and the Summer Members Exhibit at 1 Brattleboro Road to protest sharing a viewshed with photos she was told were put through an artificial intelligence (AI) image generator, though they were actually tweaked with only a digital filter.
“I’m sure that in DVAA’s photography exhibits where they don’t allow ‘altering,’ the photographers are adjusting levels, fixing red eye, blurring out backgrounds, but not allowed to use generative AI platforms with their originals. It’s interesting where the lines are drawn,” she said. “I think my boundary still stands that work submitted for an exhibition should be labeled with accurate mediums. That could be watercolor, oil, encaustic or tempera.
“It’s important we don’t obfuscate it with a catch-all term like ‘altered photo,'” she added. “It’s kind of meaningless and misleading now.”
Marge Anderson, the DVAA’s president and exhibit coordinator, explained that altered photos are allowed in general exhibits, as long as they are clearly labeled as such. In photograph-specific exhibits, she mentioned, only some minor lighting and exposure changes are permitted.
“We talked about it at our board [of directors] meeting, and people gave their thoughts on what is commonly accepted by other galleries,” Anderson said.
The photos in question were submitted by Northfield resident Tom King, who applied a Google Photos watercolor filter to three photos he took in Italy.
“The stuff I have is not AI. What I have is a filter,” he said. “AI art is totally created separately by artificial intelligence.”
King, who sits on the DVAA’s board of directors, said a few other photographers have altered photos in the exhibit, which runs until Aug. 30. Each featured artist has one to three pieces on display. King said he hasn’t received any feedback on his submissions, but he understands some people might dislike any use of filters.
“That’s what art does. It’s supposed to make you have an emotion, a feeling about the artwork,” he said. “I encourage people to come in and make their own decision about what they see.”
Formerly located in Northfield, the gallery and gift shop recently moved to Bernardston and held a grand opening on July 19. King and Anderson said the opening was “wildly” successful.
“Bernardston is very welcoming. They seem to think [the newly-constructed gallery] is a positive addition to the town,” Anderson said, adding that food for the opening reception was purchased from all Bernardston businesses. “We’re trying to be a part of the community.”
Texiera explained she got involved with Fiddleheads a couple of months ago after being encouraged to do so when she had a show at the Dickinson Memorial Library in Northfield. She said she volunteered at the gallery and was assigned to artwork check-in for the opening. That, she said, is when King walked in with “a really vibrant, beautiful watercolor painting” and mentioned it was an AI-generated artwork.
Texiera said she initially shrugged it off, but it slowly gnawed at her. Most of her watercolors have at least 10 hours of work in them. She eventually decided to email Anderson to say she was having second thoughts about volunteering for the DVAA. Anderson replied to explain the policy of allowing properly labeled altered photos in the regular exhibits but not photography exhibits.
“We would not ask you to volunteer going forward if you would not be happy doing so,” she told Texiera in an email, which Texiera later shared with the Recorder. “It seems that it would be a burden rather than an enjoyable experience for you. Therefore, we will not expect you to volunteer in August and September.”
Texiera then told Anderson she wanted to remove her work and arranged a time to retrieve it.
“I’m disappointed, but as an artist, I can’t have my work benefit an organization whose policies will ultimately undermine the arts,” she wrote.
Texiera told the Recorder she has no regrets about removing her art, but believes this is a crucial conversation to have in the art world.
“It’s really important that we talk about this and understand what’s happening to all the platforms we use,” she said.
The wider canvas
Local experts and gallery owners seem to agree that artificial intelligence is here to stay, but AI-generated artwork is largely an oxymoron.
Rachael Katz, who owns the Greenfield Gallery at 231 Main St., has hosted shows only sporadically since the COVID-19 pandemic but said she has a strict no-AI policy.
“I will not hang AI art under any conditions,” she said. “Any hint of AI at all is grounds for automatic disqualification.”
When it comes to photography, however, Katz said that “you do digitally anything that you could have accomplished with film.” Therefore, she doesn’t particularly distinguish between physical filters attached to cameras and alterations made by pushing buttons on smartphones or through software applications on computers.
“Where I personally draw the line is where the photo is significantly enhanced or altered with digital tools,” she said. “I take a very hard stance about AI in general because I feel that it steals from artists.”
Laura Haas, a University of Massachusetts Amherst computer science professor who follows the public-interest impacts of technology, told the Recorder that there are AI systems that are being trained on copyrighted artwork — including literature, music and other media — and there is an ongoing debate about the legality of this practice.
In general, she explained, the courts seem to be deciding that training is “fair use.” However, it is considered illegal to obtain data that violates a website’s policies on “scraping,” the automated process of using a software bot to harvest millions of images, illustrations, and photos from the internet without the creators’ permission. It is also illegal, Haas said, to use learned skills to compete with or in the same market as the original artist, or to pass off AI-generated works as originals.
“While technologists are trying to find ways to detect ‘copying’ and tell AI-generated works from human-generated, ultimately there will need to be legal guidance to resolve what is likely going to be a long-term issue,” she wrote in an email.
Many artists and legal experts argue that training AI on copyrighted works without permission or pay is theft, while tech companies and some legal scholars contend that AI learns from existing works the same way a human artist gets inspiration from other people’s work. Katz said AI companies harvest billions of images from the internet without permission or without paying the original creators, something she despises. She also said living artists’ unique style can become replicated, and this can cut into their potential commissions and work. She mentioned that artists lose jobs and income when businesses use automated tools instead of hiring people.
Katz also dislikes AI art’s significant environmental footprint, as the technology relies on data centers that use massive volumes of water and draw enormous amounts of electricity from power grids that frequently rely on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. A medium-sized data center can consume up to roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, established by a bipartisan group of members of Congress in 1984. An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that data centers consumed 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 alone.
John Moore, a metalworker involved with the Sawmill River Arts Collective in Montague, said the artist-run gallery has no specific AI policy, though there is a policy requiring original artwork, and he feels AI art would likely violate that. Located at 440 Greenfield Road, the gallery currently showcases the work of 15 resident artists and approximately 20 consignors.
“Nobody here does AI art,” Moore said. “It hasn’t struck us yet.”
He likened AI art to a writer using the technology to produce a story.
Michael Tillyer, founding director of the New England Visionary Artists Museum at 518 Pleasant St. in Northampton, said the non-commercial art space and community cultural center has no formal policy on AI-generated artwork.
“People have come here wanting to show their AI art and it hasn’t been very interesting,” he said. “I do know there are really interesting AI projects on a large scale, and I do know that the world of art is very, very big.”
Tillyer said the museum opened in 1997.
“What we’re interested in showing is authentic art from a visionary standpoint,” he explained.
Tillyer mentioned he teaches a Holyoke Community College course on visual fundamentals, and he talks about AI art with his students.
“I’m not a purist. I’m an artist. I’ve been making art for 50 years,” he said. “I’m fascinated with how humans get to bringing imagination into the world.”
William Baczek, of William Baczek Fine Arts at 36 Main St. in Northampton, said he has no AI-specific policy but he would not display any artwork generated by artificial intelligence. He said, though, that he does consider photo filters to be under the AI umbrella. Photography, by its very nature, he said, is dependent on technology.
Baczek said he largely showcases two photographers — Susan Mikula and Peter Sandback, who are both prominent in their field. Most of the work in the gallery, however, consists of paintings in the varieties of oil, acrylic and egg tempera, which is made by mixing colored powder pigments with water and egg yolk.
Regardless, the DVAA’s board of directors discussed at its August meeting the gallery’s rules for AI and altered photography and decided to stick with its current policy. Anderson reiterated that altered photos and art via Photoshop, filters and other programs are acceptable in general exhibits if clearly identified as such.
AI photos and art are accepted in general exhibits if created by artists using work originally created by others after it enters the public domain, or when using mostly AI-generated images. In both cases, Anderson said, the work must be clearly identified as AI-generated. There should be, however, some original input or recombination by the photographer or graphic artist, rather than a complete replication.
Any photos created using copyrighted materials must have written permission from the original artist or their estate and be identified as such.
DVAA is celebrating its 95th anniversary this year. According to Anderson, it holds six to eight shows, including two members-only shows and a K-12 student show, per year. Other exhibits are themed and may be held annually, biannually or one-time. A participating artist must live in New England, though most are from Franklin and Hampshire counties.
