The Getty Museum is running an exhibition about the history of queer photography—but one of the images is completely AI-generated.
Back in January, the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica announced that the Getty acquired its first AI image: “Christian en el ‘Amor de Calle.’” The AI image was created by Matías Sauter Morera as part of his Pegamachos series, which re-imagines stories of cowboys from the Guanacaste Coast who had sexual encounters with young gay men in the 1970s.
According to Artnet, Sauter Morera opted to use generative AI instead of a camera like he originally planned because “the pegamachos culture remains hidden” and he didn’t want to expose the identities of his subjects.
The inclusion of the image has caught some people off guard. One attendee found that while the small print of the placard mentioned it was AI-generated, that disclosure was omitted in the caption of the exhibit’s accompanying book, resulting in backlash on social media.
We explore the many concerns people have about AI and why the museum made the decision to highlight an AI-generated image in an exhibit focused on queer history.
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