Exhibition and Programs Explore AI Generative Art at the MSU Museum and Across Campus

The MSU Museum is pleased to announce a new, rapid-response exhibition and programs series that will explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) generative models on society. Prompt Response: Exploring Generative Artificial Intelligence will examine the latest developments in emergent AI technology, including OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, which have sparked debates about the ethical and professional implications of generative models for creative fields.

AI generative models are tools that use a user-created text input, or prompt, to create new, unique outputs ranging from images to written text. These models are trained using massive sets of human-selected data, allowing the model to “learn” from patterns in the data to generate similar content. With just a few prompts, these models can produce detailed artistic works or paragraphs of writing in a matter of seconds.

While AI generative models offer new methods of producing content, they also raise complex questions. Who holds the rights to the content created by these models? Are these tools ethical and do they reinforce biases? What are the impacts of generative AI on the creative process and creative fields?

Prompt Response will explore these and other questions featuring crowd-sourced works created using AI generative models. The exhibition encourages everyone to participate by creating their own AI generated artwork that will be featured at the MSU Museum and on monitors across campus.

“The introduction of generative AI tools presents both challenges and opportunities to the ways we work, learn, and create,” said MSU Museum Director Devon Akmon. “As a creative collaboratory, the Museum will create space for our communities to both learn about these rapidly evolving technologies, and to co-create exhibition content.”

Additional program activities include a visual art workshop utilizing AI on Sunday, March 19; a sonic workshop exploring text-to-sound generative AI on Sunday, April 2; and a panel discussion featuring scholars and creative practitioners from MSU faculty that will explore the impact of generative AI on society set for Thursday, March 23 at the MSU Museum­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­.