The Kingston Christmas mural was an AI disaster, but what does it say about our relationship with generative technology?
Anyone passing by Kingston’s Riverside Walk in November was likely to catch sight of the huge AI mural above Bill’s and Côte Brasserie.
From afar, the installation seemed to depict a scene of festive gathering with some subjects skating, warming up by the fire and laughing together.
However, a more attentive eye could discern a myriad of glitching faces, hybridised animals and some even darker political allegories.
No sooner was the mural up – reported to be created by the artist Mat Collishaw, who declined to confirm or deny his involvement – than the discourse started on Reddit, Instagram and X.
Mural-gate took social media by storm.
Alongside a carousel of pictures of glitching details, a reddit user wrote: “Scenes of Lovecraftian horror at Kingston’s riverside Christmas mural… What in the AI is going on here and just HOW did this carnage get approved. This abomination is also about 100 feet wide!”
On Instagram some comments read: “Not my Art, a machine produced Image…”; “AI is not to blame here”; “The fact that Kingston upon Thames has an art college and any of the artists there would of been over the moon to do this mural??”
Users on X turned more political, with someone writing: “Like an M&S ‘Stop the Boats’ ad or The Lawnmower Man trying to do Bosch / Bruegel.”
The furore was so intense that the mural was quickly taken down.
Political or not, when this “Lovecraftian horror” was removed, I cannot deny having felt relief at the thought that something so clearly warped and artificial was out of everyone’s sight; almost as if justice had been served.
To be completely honest, AI in art fills me with dread. I am well aware that this kind of aesthetic panic is not an unprecedented phenomenon. Every technological shift in history has sparked its array of negative reactions: photography was accused of killing painting, synthesizers of cheapening music, and digital film of ruining the texture of celluloid.
But none of these other technologies attempted to remove the human creator entirely. What distinguishes generative AI (GAI), and makes it more troubling, is that it asks us to accept creation without the creator.
The Kingston mural may have been thankfully short-lived but it still speaks to the stealthy presence of GAI in our private and public spaces.
Whether it be in the form of reels on our Instagram feed, auto-generated ads, or brief captions, GAI content has infiltrated our social diet without the slightest scruple. It has managed to impose itself everywhere without ever sounding any alarms. It scrolls right past all of our unsuspecting eyes.
I wonder: had the Christmas mural been generated flawlessly, without any signs of unsettling distortion nor political issues, would it still be up and running like those reels on our social feeds?
Given the general GAI trend, the answer would appear to be yes. It would still be on display amongst warm lights and the fragrance of mulled wine.
Would it have mattered?
I think so.
I think it would have evidenced that we are starting to place exclusive value on the final part of the production chain. That we only care about products whether they are big and fast and cheap, whether they can appear atop shops, overnight, in mid-November.
It would have also suggested that we are growing disengaged from our own eyes. That day in and day out we refuse to reject the uncanny sights of the artificial world, telling ourselves that it is all but mere entertainment, that it is doing no wrong. Denial is, after all, one of the five stages of grief.
Worse still – catastrophically so – it would have suggested that we are on the path to replacing our artists; that we are increasingly unwilling to seek out the services of those whose tools are still the mind, the hands and the heart.
It is a fact that GAI is the fastest improving technology of our time, and one day soon it will not err as it did this year. The glitches will be gone, the distortions will smooth out, and we will be surrounded by perfect images that come from nowhere.
Is that a problem?
Once again, I think so.
I think there lies a great risk in surrounding ourselves with anonymous perfection and in allowing it to take over those very faculties which have kept us beautifully human for so long.
The Kingston mural was nothing other than a reminder that the choice, quietly but urgently, is already upon us.
