AI helps artist think outside the frame

The artist Kody Young set Twitter ablaze recently with his reconfigurations of masterpieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, posting zoomed-out versions of famous paintings with new backgrounds that (more or less) match the backdrop of the original works. “Got @Adobe Firefly to help fill out the background for me with the power of AI [artificial intelligence],” wrote Young, who also posted enlarged versions of works by Edward Hopper, Vincent van Gogh and Sandro Botticelli. The AI tool “made a semi-reasonable guess [with The Birth of Venus] that there was more water in front of Venus, instead of land,” Young notes. But some Twitter users were not amused. “No sane person has ever looked at the Mona Lisa and thought, ‘Gee, I wonder what the rest of the painting looks like’,” wrote one rather sardonic contributor.