AI-inspired exhibition features portraits of people who don’t exist

Royal portraitist Jonathan Yeo has taken on a new challenge: painting the portrait of a man who does not exist.

The artist, whose flamboyant red image of King Charles recently made headlines, is part of a group of painters using artificial intelligence to create new works for a unique exhibition.

The exhibition is the brainchild of husband and wife duo Rob and Nick Carter who used the website This Person Does Not Exist to generate realistic facial images of non-existent people which were then passed to the artists to use as a source of inspiration.

Yeo’s work, titled Destination: Void, 2024, will feature alongside that of more than 20 artists, including Gavin Turk and the Carters themselves, who have urged artists not to be afraid of new technologies.

Rob said: “Artists have always used the tools at their disposal to create works of art and I think we would be foolish not to embrace AI and use it in a way that could help us help in the future.

“It’s a great tool, and we really shouldn’t shy away from it.” We should take advantage of it and use it. This situation is not going to go away, so we should accept it and use it to our advantage rather than fighting it.

He added: “We are holding an exhibition of portraits of people who don’t exist. I don’t think this has ever happened before.

“It’s a really good example of what we can do with AI, because we’re using an AI-generated website as a starting point – a launching pad for artists to develop ideas based on that.”

“All the works in the exhibition are handmade by artists who start from “this person does not exist”.

“They do not take a screenshot of this website and present it as a photograph. They use it as a starting point from which they then paint or create a work.

“Some images are totally different from this starting point. You will never be able to trace the image generated by the AI.

The show also features a portrait of David Bowie based on an AI image created to show what the singer, who died in 2016, would look like if he were still alive.

Nick said all the guest artists “really jumped at the opportunity,” adding that she hoped it would start “a dialogue for people to discuss it and get them to think about what it actually means.”

This Person Does Not Exist runs until September 9 at the Carters’ Rnat5A gallery in Bathurst Street, central London.