An AI -generated poster for the Ohio State Fair is at the center of a growing debate over the use of artificial intelligence in art.
The poster won the fair’s art poster contest and took home the top cash prize. The winning design has drawn backlash and renewed questions about the use of AI.
Paul Hugenberg with Pelican3 Consulting says the controversy is part of a much larger trend as generative AI becomes increasingly accessible.
Ohio State Fair winning contest poster
“It’s almost taken over. So it’s much easier, much faster, much quicker,” Hugenberg said. “You can manipulate images on the fly. Folks without heavy training in that profession can do it through their general chat box.”
Experts say AI tools can create and alter images, advertisements, posters and other forms of content in seconds. As AI-generated content becomes easier to produce, identifying it is becoming more important.
Hugenberg says there can be clues within an image or video that reveal something was created or altered by AI, including repeated numbers, inconsistencies and unnecessary punctuation.
Another way you can tell if a photo or video is created by AI is if it looks too perfect to be real.
“You can look through things, and you can see inconsistencies and how the natural world puts items together,” Hugenberg said. “If they’re videos, a lot of times physical devices or physical items will move through another physical item.”
Hugenberg believes the use of AI could eventually lead to rules requiring AI-generated content to be clearly labeled, or even separate categories for work created by humans and work created with artificial intelligence.
“I think if you look in the future, what you’ll see is, are we marking stuff appropriately, and is there a method for us to identify what is AI?” Hugenberg said.