No Excuse for AI in the Creative Capital

A few weeks ago, I opened up Instagram on my laptop (unconventional and unwieldy, I’m aware, but its existence on my phone only ever serves to sap my attention) and saw a now-deleted post from my city councilman, John Goncalves of Ward 1. The post was part of a social media trend where ChatGPT creates a caricature of users based on data they have given it (or, for public figures like Goncalves, perhaps scraped from the web). The

Goncalves’ use of artificial intelligence is, unfortunately, not unprecedented by city officials and organizations, and not even the most egregious. On 6 February, the Providence Tourism Board—an organization that constantly sells Providence as the Creative Capital—posted a reel to its Instagram account with the words “A cozy winter day in Providence” over a city that was most certainly not Providence. As journalist Philip Eil pointed out:

Aerial drone videos of Providence are not hard to come by, and there are plenty of phenomenal options to choose from in Providence (@captured.by.marc is the first that comes to my mind); but in their quest to reduce either speed or cost, or both—we can only speculate—the PTB instead advertised a city that not only looks nothing like Providence, but doesn’t even exist. As outrage over this fact mounted on Bluesky and in the comment section, the post was taken down.

Artificial intelligence is problematic for multiple reasons—its impact on the environment, creation of CSAM, donations to the Trump regime, data farming and privacy concerns, enshittification of search and websites, spreading of misinformation, and impact on cognition, just to name a few—but it is especially nefarious in a city with such a vibrant arts scene. Not only is the city home to one of the best arts colleges and one of the most impressive art museums in the country, but local, human art is around every corner, be it murals and utility boxes or venues and galleries.

This poses a question for the PTB: it Providence the Creative Capital, or a city where we must resort to using AI to advertise it? If it is the latter, why are we advertising this talent and refusing to use it? Returning to Goncalves’ post, it’s not as if there’s simply no other option to using AI for social media trends: during the “starter pack figure” trend, Roger Williams Park Zoo bucked the trend with a staff member-drawn zookeeper starter pack, using local artistic talent that helps make the Creative Capital what it is.

Providence’s arts community is essential to its identity and culture, and generative AI “art” poses a great, near-existential threat to it. When organizations and individuals in Providence use AI instead of local talent (many of whom may be their own neighbors!), they are sacrificing one of the most important assets that makes Providence, Providence. They are saying to our local artists (and community more broadly), “I’d rather save a a buck/hour than support our local artists and community,” and for this, there is no excuse.