The Tamesis
An image created by artificial intelligence purporting to be a famous watercolor by Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele has generated hundreds of thousands of views and sparked outrage and alarm on X.
The image was posted by @lovedropx, an account with 287,000 followers and an avid reposter of sentimental inspirational quotes. The work, which depicts a woman wearing a black dress and stockings in the style of a Schiele painting, is titled after an authentic watercolor, gouache and pastel work by the artist from 1917.
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While many followers of @lovedropsx (and perhaps @lovedropx himself) appear to have been duped by the wrong Schiller, others don’t think so. As outraged Artworld readers pointed out in the comments, not only did the “model’s” makeup, hair, and nails not match the style of the era, but she also had six fingers. As @BoreSevere pointed out on @nomadic_anais, the image strips Schiller of any provocation.
This is not the first AI-generated image mistakenly attributed to Schiller on social media in recent months. Art Detective posted on Facebook last December, “Watch out for new AI creations ‘inspired’ by Egon Schiele. Some are revealed as AI… but others are not… This is a common phenomenon these days as it is so easy to generate AI [images] Based on famous art. “
Unfortunately, the post has already racked up 280,000 views and more than 6,700 likes, fueling concerns in the art world that fabricated content on social media is undermining the truth about art history. Now it appears with additional context written by the reader.
