When a ‘fake’ Monet turns out to be the real deal: What we really value about art |
When a ‘fake’ Monet turns out to be the real deal: What we really value about art
May 24, 2026 — 1:30pm
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Last week an image was posted on social media with the caption: “I just generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI. Please describe, in as much detail as possible, what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting.”
Hundreds of people piled on. “There is no cohesion to the depth and colour choices,” wrote one. “It’s high school level art 101,” said another. “It lacks the mess of humanity.” “It looks nothing like a Monet.”
Of course, the painting was a real Monet – one of his famous Water Lilies.
The experiment – posted by an anonymous conceptual artist who uses the pseudonym @SHL0MS – reveals something more interesting than human gullibility: it speaks to how confused we have become about what art is and why it matters.
Studies consistently find that people cannot distinguish AI-generated images from human ones and, despite often preferring AI art, show a strong negative bias towards it the moment they learn its origin. The water lilies are just one recent example of AI infiltrating the creative industries.
One thing is already changing pop culture forever. This is how
Late last year the band The Velvet Sundown racked up 900,000 listeners on Spotify........