When flyers were posted this month throughout the 623 S. Wabash building promoting a “Pancake Breakfast” for the School of Visual Arts, several students noticed that it was created using artificial intelligence.

Gus Kelsey, a senior illustration major and president of the Illustration Student Group, said they first saw the AI-generated poster on Sept. 12, while stepping off the elevator that morning. They initially thought the poster was drawn by a colleague who had a similar art style, but said their “heart sank” when they noticed it was AI-generated because of how the hands were drawn. 

Joey Randall, a senior illustration major, also noticed it was AI-generated because of the hands on the poster. One of the telltale signs of AI use by the hands because of the way the technology interprets hands, including fingers, and because the material AI is trained on is filled with images of hands with different numbers of fingers and angles.

“I just really couldn’t believe that the School of Visual Arts would use generated AI images for official, promotional stuff,” Kelsey said.

The pancake breakfast, held on Friday, Sept. 20 as planned, was designed as a community building event for the School of Visual Arts.

Kelsey said they took a picture of the flyer and posted it on their social media, creating a “larger conversation for other people.”

They then approached Chris Eliopoulos, associate professor of design, about the flyer. Kesley said Eliopoulos told them that “if you see them, feel free to tear them down.” Kelsey began tearing down the flyers when they came in contact with them, encouraging other students to do the same.

“Personally, I have a zero tolerance for generative AI images anywhere in Columbia,” Kelsey said. “So I felt like I should take them down so that people know that this is not what we represent.”

Eddie Stevenson, a junior traditional animation major and director of board events for ISG, said he’d seen other students taking the flyers down, writing on them, mocking them and creating stickers reading “No to AI.”

The controversy is representative of the larger one taking place within the design industry. AI allows non-artists to create artistic representations quickly and easily, as the School of Visual Arts did for the pancake event, but many artists consider AI to be theft since it uses existing art to create new works based on a prompt. Students also are worried about the impact on their careers.

Eliopoulos said that generative AI “poses a massive threat to creative careers, industries and communities.”

“I feel strongly that we should not use generative AI in our classrooms,” Eliopoulos said. 

 Students at the college have free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud – Adobe Firefly, a generative AI tool, is included in the access. 

Although it may be a good starting point for some ideas, students should develop their own original ideas, said Elio Leturia, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Culture who teaches a visual communication course. “AI is a tool that helps with content production, but it should be used as a supporting tool, not as a tool that does the work for you.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 17, Kelsey and Stevenson went to the office of Duncan MacKenzie, interim director for the School of Visual Arts, to “express that we’re really upset” that the poster was created by generative AI instead of through a student, Stevenson said.

Stevenson told the Chronicle that MacKenzie informed them that the staff was in a “time crunch” while creating the flyer due to no student worker being hired over the summer to fulfill the role of designing posters and advertisements.

The student work aide position for creating these flyers has been open to apply on Handshake for the past two weeks.

Kelsey said MacKenzie didn’t seem to take the students seriously.

“He was trying to make little jokes about it and he called the creation of the image an ‘act of whimsy,’ which I thought was a strange way to put it,” Kelsey said.

MacKenzie did not respond to an interview request.

Both Stevenson and Kelsey said they pushed MacKenzie to send out an apology for the flyer. The apology was sent to illustration majors, faculty and staff the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 18. Students in other majors in the School of Visual Arts told the Chronicle that they did not receive the email.

The email, sent out by MacKenzie, said that after meeting with a couple of members from ISG, they “swayed my thinking about the AI poster incident.”

MacKenzie said that the use of AI to generate the poster was due to losing a crucial staff member, also admitting to the error and said “It was a solution we should not have immediately leapt to.”

Despite the apology, Stevenson and Kelsey had mixed feelings about the email.

“It makes me wonder how tolerant he is of people using AI overall, because to me, the actions speak louder than words,” Kelsey said.

Eliopoulos said he was “grateful” for the letter sent out by MacKenzie.

“The letter’s timeliness was quick and appropriate,” Eliopoulos said.  “The letter expressed genuine concern, reflection, and grace. SVA is a school where student’s voices matter, and this letter is proof of that.”

Randall said they “mildly accepted” the apology letter from MacKenzie, as long as the school hires an illustrator in the future to create new advertisements.

“There are plenty of good illustrators in our program, there’s so many of us,” Randall said.  “And some of us would even do it for free – even though they shouldn’t, you should pay your artist.”

Stevenson said students are upset is because a student is supposed to fulfill the position to make posters for the school of visual arts,

“We are already feeling like we’re watching jobs get melted away by AI, and we just watched it happen in front of our eyes already, before we’re even really in the field,” Steveson said.

Copy edited by Manuel Nocera