In Hull, curator and artist Lucy Brooke says those concerns began building after a local gallery announced a paid workshop led by an artist from out of town.
Participants were told to bring a laptop to “use ChatGPT to generate images”, a detail she says contributed to “a massive public backlash from the local arts community”.
She wanted to turn that frustration into something constructive, so organised a free online session for people to “learn a little bit about AI, its environmental impacts and its political and social impacts, and then have an open forum where we can discuss it”.
What stood out to her was how quickly the conversation became about working together.
She says “the overwhelming view from the creatives was a lot about the idea of community”, challenging the idea that artists are “solitary individuals who work late nights and do lots of drawing and practice all on their own, when in reality we share our practice a lot more now”.
That, she adds, “differentiates us from the process that ChatGPT follows, which is a prompt to an image”.
But she says the discussion also revealed deeper worries about “copyright, plagiarism and exploitation”.
Lucy hopes artists can “build a community to lobby these galleries” and push for “greater policy around AI, AI usage and regulation”.
As she puts it: “There’s no point in an art gallery if there aren’t artists.”