{"id":429540,"date":"2026-01-25T20:01:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T20:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/429540\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T20:01:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T20:01:31","slug":"meet-the-alaska-student-arrested-for-eating-an-ai-art-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/429540\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Society<\/a><\/p>\n

\/ <\/p>\n

StudentNation<\/a><\/p>\n

\/
\n January 22, 2026<\/p>\n

A conversation with Graham Granger, whose combination of protest and performance art spread beyond campus. \u201cAI chews up and spits out art made by other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Graham Granger after his arraignment outside the court building. Right: The art exhibit, made with the help of AI, by Nick Dwyer.<\/p>\n

(Simeon Ramirez; Colin Warren)<\/p>\n

This story was produced for StudentNation, a program of the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism<\/a>, which is dedicated to highlighting the best of student journalism. For more StudentNation, check out\u00a0our archive<\/a>\u00a0or learn more about the program\u00a0here<\/a>. StudentNation is made possible through generous funding from\u00a0The Puffin Foundation<\/a>. If you\u2019re a student and you have an article idea, please send pitches and questions to\u00a0[email\u00a0protected].<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> \u201cin a reported protest,\u201d according to the police report.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting was contributed by Lizzy Hahn.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was tearing them up and just shoving them in as fast as he could,\u201d said Ali Martinez, a witness to the event. \u201cLike when you see people in a hot-dog eating contest.\u201d According to the police estimate, around 57 of the 160 images on the wall were destroyed.<\/p>\n

In the exhibit, artist Nick Dwyer expressed his struggle with \u201cAI psychosis,\u201d 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 \u201cJungian shadow,\u201d which is the repressed, often negative, yet creative part of one\u2019s personality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been an awesome performance piece that literally encapsulates the problems with AI art and artists,\u201d said Dwyer. But he didn\u2019t accept Granger\u2019s protest as an excuse to destroy his work. Dwyer claims Granger\u2019s act was akin to slashing someone\u2019s tires to protest the oil industry. He initially wanted to press charges because Granger\u2019s act \u201cviolates the sanctity of the gallery,\u201d but changed his mind, dropping the charges. The state is still proceeding with the case.<\/p>\n

Dwyer thinks there has to be room for new technology in the art space. \u201cAI is a lens and it\u2019s viewing humanity. Some people will see it as stealing from artists. The other way to see it is that it\u2019s an extension of humanity,\u201d he said. \u201cAI art might be a tax on the artists. Tax is nonconsensual; some people say tax is theft. That\u2019s something we\u2019re going to have to wrestle with.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pressed about the fact that Dwyer was still using AI to create art, even after it led him to psychosis, he smiled. \u201cI\u2019m trying to wean myself off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current Issue<\/p>\n


\n \"Cover
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Below is a conversation with Granger, who has since been released from the Fairbanks Correctional Facility. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

\u2014Colin Warren
\u2002<\/p>\n

Colin Warren: How did your arraignment go this morning at court?<\/p>\n

GG: Fine. I\u2019m hoping since I\u2019m a first-time offender, it won\u2019t be serious jail time. I\u2019m expecting to pay a fine.<\/p>\n

CW: How did you come up with this idea, and what led you to the gallery that day?<\/p>\n

GG: I walked down with my friend to his class really early, so I was stuck outside for like an hour. I was just wandering around the fine arts building waiting for my class to start. I eventually went into the gallery and I took a look and I was very impressed by almost all the pieces in there.<\/p>\n

CW: So your act wasn\u2019t premeditated?<\/p>\n

GG: No, I didn\u2019t know about the exhibit before that day. And then I saw the AI piece and it was just\u2014as an artist myself, it was insulting to see something of such little effort alongside all these beautiful pieces in the gallery. It shouldn\u2019t be acceptable for this \u201cart,\u201d if you will, to be put alongside these real great pieces. It\u2019s art that has zero substance. Not zero substance; I mean it\u2019s a very personal work, right? It\u2019s art that takes away from its own substance by not being made by the artist himself.<\/p>\n

CW: Do you consider what you did protest, performance art, both, or something else?<\/p>\n

GG: Both. It\u2019s a protest against the school\u2019s AI policy specifically and it\u2019s performance art because I needed something that would elicit a reaction. So this could reach more people.<\/p>\n

CW: Was it an attempt to go viral?<\/p>\n

GG: No, no, not at all. I wanted to bring this to the attention of the school as a whole. I really hadn\u2019t expected this to go past the college campus.<\/p>\n

CW: Did you see the story in many media outlets<\/a>?<\/p>\n

GG: I did, yeah. There\u2019s an Italian art magazine. I was contacted by a Russian newspaper. I have friends who I haven\u2019t talked to in years that all started messaging me.<\/p>\n

CW: Do you use AI for anything?<\/p>\n

GG: I don\u2019t really use it period. I miss the Wikipedia blurbs being at the top of webpages. If I\u2019m looking up a simple math fact that I don\u2019t know\u2014like what the weight of something is\u2014I\u2019ll look at the AI summary, but I never, almost never, hit the expand button.<\/p>\n

CW: What are your personal thoughts on AI, specifically in art?<\/p>\n

GG: I think artificial intelligence is a very valuable tool. I think that it has no place in the arts. It takes away a lot of the human effort that makes art. If art cannot be improved upon by criticism, it\u2019s hard to call it art. And there is an argument to be made that you can criticize your AI art by changing the prompts and generating more images to pick from, but that work doesn\u2019t compare to the criticisms that a real piece of art would receive if you critique it.<\/p>\n

CW: So your main problem with it is that it doesn\u2019t process criticism?<\/p>\n

GG: It\u2019s not the only problem. There\u2019s a whole host of things. It depends on your definition of art. I say AI isn\u2019t art. I know a lot of people who would agree with me. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any perfect argument that can be made for this, because no matter what you say somebody will come up with a counterpoint because at its core art is subjective.<\/p>\n

However, the process by which art is made is oftentimes more important than the finished product, and if the process of making your art is just typing a prompt in, it just takes away from the accomplishments of other talented artists. And it really hurts the practice of art by commercializing that finished product.<\/p>\n

CW: Do you have any qualms about the fact that AI art is made by scraping other artists?<\/p>\n

GG: Yeah, I mean, that\u2019s part of why I spat it out, because AI chews up and spits out art made by other people.<\/p>\n

CW: So during your demonstration, you didn\u2019t swallow any of the exhibit?<\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

GG: I swallowed some of it. I had really been spitting it out near the end. I didn\u2019t want to make too much of a mess, but I also didn\u2019t want to have to spit it out in the back of a police car.<\/p>\n

CW: What were your thoughts the day after the incident?<\/p>\n

GG: I was scared for court. I was surprised I didn\u2019t spend the whole night in jail. I expected to be there for a day or two. I was there for probably six hours.<\/p>\n

\n Popular
\n \u201cswipe left below to view more authors\u201dSwipe \u2192\n <\/p>\n

CW: Do you have any regrets now that you have a criminal record?<\/p>\n

GG: No. This is something I feel very strongly about, and I think that it was something that had to be done. I\u2019m not going to say I\u2019m glad I was the one to do it, because I don\u2019t like to make myself the center of attention in this way, but I don\u2019t regret having a criminal record.<\/p>\n

CW: Have you ever been in an eating contest?<\/p>\n

GG: Yeah, a long long time ago. I did a mashed-potato eating contest at a renaissance fair back in Georgia.<\/p>\n

Colin Warren<\/a><\/p>\n

Colin Warren is 2025 Puffin student writing fellow focusing on climate and rural issues for The Nation. He is a senior climate scholar at University of Alaska at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, serving as editor in chief of the school newspaper, The Sun Star. His work also appears in The Nome Nugget, Copper River Record, and The McCarthy Canards, among others.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore from The Nation<\/p>\n


\n \"Alex
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The 37-year-old ICU nurse was killed helping another ICE victim. We must honor his sacrifice.<\/p>\n

\n Joan Walsh<\/a> <\/p>\n


\n \"Protesters
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Minneapolis has become ground zero for the Trump administration\u2019s war on immigrants and the growing resistance to it.<\/p>\n

\n Alyssa Oursler<\/a> <\/p>\n


\n \"Why
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

In 2021, six men sexually assaulted me in a Las Vegas hotel room. Something more than abolitionism prevented me from reporting the crime.<\/p>\n

\n Anna Krauthamer<\/a> <\/p>\n


\n \"Displaced
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s governing soccer body saves a pitch in the West Bank\u2014but is it only because the Swiss Parliament is threatening to pull its tax exemption over its inclusion of Israel?<\/p>\n

\n Jules Boykoff<\/a> and Dave Zirin<\/a> <\/p>\n


\n \"Bruce
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Mourning for Renee Nicole Good, the singer decried the Trump administration and the threat to freedom posed by \u201cheavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n John Nichols<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Society \/ StudentNation \/ January 22, 2026 A conversation with Graham Granger, whose combination of protest and performance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-429540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}