By Thanvi Nimmala
Recently,
as I was scrolling through Instagram, I came across an image captioned
"Bastet by Emile Corsi, 1877." At first glance, this appears to be a
legitimate post displaying the work of a 19th century artist. However,
it is in fact a product of generative AI.
I was curious to find how “Emile Corsi” came to be. Was it the name of the AI user? Could it be a persona or a pen-name? With a little searching, I found that the creation of the persona “Emile Corsi” traces to a tumblr account by the name Shuttered Gallery. By scrolling through their account, you can see many images credited to the name Emile Corsi followed by a year in the 19th century.
I was curious to find how “Emile Corsi” came to be. Was it the name of the AI user? Could it be a persona or a pen-name? With a little searching, I found that the creation of the persona “Emile Corsi” traces to a tumblr account by the name Shuttered Gallery. By scrolling through their account, you can see many images credited to the name Emile Corsi followed by a year in the 19th century.
Despite
the circulation of these images among art accounts, it is important to
note that Shutter Gallery explicitly states that these images are
products of AI generated technology and that the persona of “Emile
Corsi” are fabricated. Even in their blog posts, the images are tagged
with phrases such as "#fictional artist," "#fictional dates," "#ai
generated!!," etc.
The
name Emile Corsi is credited to many painterly-styled works that have
been reposted on social media. Reposters do not credit the AI user but
rather the persona, creating a layer of illusion to this mythical
artist. Let’s say there is an individual who actively follows art pages
who they believe to be a reliable source of content. They suddenly come
across an “Emile Corsi” image presented in the way as traditional
paintings.
