The image "The World's Young Artificial Influencers" by Koy Bendull.

To understand the complexity of its creation, Koy Bendull commented as follows: 

When I first worked with ChatGPT in 2022, or actually with Dalle2, I, like everyone else, was fascinated by the possibilities and the interesting output. As an artist, I particularly liked the often unfinished aspects and the "hallucinated" elements added by the AI, as well as the errors that arose during image generation. The AI ​​accidentally did what we as artists often do intentionally: inaccuracies and blurred content in the image. But one thing was also clear: simply printing an AI-generated image as art or something similar wasn't possible. It was far too banal. A concept was needed that, while integrating AI's capabilities, was ultimately dominated by the composition and the artist's conceptual idea (conceptual artist). Furthermore, it couldn't be easily replicated and couldn't be produced in this way or in series by any other artist. That was the goal. After much thought, testing, and creating prototypes, I had found a solution, my own. 

It was to be a gigantic building block concept that combined AI with digital and classical painting and integrated other art techniques such as collage, graphics, drawing, and street art (spray). It was important to me that the surface of the images closely resembled that of a smartphone touchscreen. That is, smooth and reflective. The latter, the reflection in the "screen," i.e., the image, was particularly important to me. The viewer should be able to see themselves and their surroundings (which always vary depending on where the image is displayed) in the image. This unites and blends the image and reflection individually. Ideal for the selfie-taking generation. And an analogy to the "mirroring" of user behavior by smartphones and the many apps that, in the background, create multifaceted reflections of our personalities from our data. The operating system and the apps can record far more data than we realize. User personalities are created that can have an impact for many years to come. 

The decision to stop painting on canvas with a brush was incredibly difficult for me. I love the wonderful structures that emerge on canvas with a brush or other techniques so much. Like, for example, the wonderful abstract expressionists with their free color fields and structures (such as Jackson Pollock (thick streaks), Helen Frankentaler (thin blobs), and many more). But this 'painting' was a thing of the past; today it has to be smooth. Superficially sterile, just like the screen of a smartphone or tablet. This led to an unusual aesthetic that doesn't initially look 'artistic'. 

But, I repeat, it had to be done: The art had to be behind screens, with and without AI. In my case, the screens were made of acrylic glass. This is the aesthetic of tomorrow: clean, eel-smooth, and wipeable. Screens are what hold the whole world in their hands and also in suspense. So, after a year of experimentation, the first 'screen on canvas' painting was created. I no longer painted with a brush, but composed the screens, which were printed, painted, or pasted on. Mounted on canvas. The possibilities of a modular system are vast; different images can emerge from the same screens. And multiple images can be interlocked or intertwined. For the painting "The Young Artificial Influencers of the World," 200 screens were ultimately used, but 400 were produced for the compositional possibilities. That's complex. No one will be able to create this painting with its 200 screens again, because AI is constantly evolving. The results will be more perfect, or not, but they won't be as good as they were in 2022. In the search for a concept that captures the spirit of the times, I have created and documented several thousand AI images during this time.

The image "The World's Young Artificial Influencers" consists of two aesthetically distinct sections: 

First, there is the "Faces" section. From two right-angled triangles, over 60 young people with indifferent facial expressions look directly into the viewer's eyes. It's like influencers looking directly at the user from their mobile phones. The faces obviously come from all continents, representing the world of influencers. Less obvious is that all the faces were created by artificial intelligence. This is fitting and even necessary, because the most successful influencers of the future will be visually AI-generated and content-controlled by AI. 

The second section, kept light, is cropped by the two triangles with the portraits and resembles a funnel. The social media funnel feeds users subjective texts and images, perhaps analogous to the Nuremberg funnel that poured knowledge directly into their heads in earlier times. This section consists of screens that display the self-promotion of ChatGPT original 2022 as screenshots (which no longer exist today). The central text of the advertisement always begins with "Let's..." and ends with an oversized black dot. These slogans were supplemented by the artist with less pleasant, critical slogans. 

In the center of this area, the thinking apparatus is visualized, starting at the bottom with large AI superprocessors that merge vertically upwards into NI brain area networks. The resulting colorful thought spheres permeate the entire image, including the area of ​​the faces. To understand the complexity of its creation, Koy Bendull commented as follows: 

When I first worked with ChatGPT in 2022, or actually with Dalle2, I, like everyone else, was fascinated by the possibilities and the interesting output. As an artist, I particularly liked the often unfinished aspects and the "hallucinated" elements added by the AI, as well as the errors that arose during image generation. The AI ​​accidentally did what we as artists often do intentionally: inaccuracies and blurred content in the image. But one thing was also clear: simply printing an AI-generated image as art or something similar wasn't possible. It was far too banal. A concept was needed that, while integrating AI's capabilities, was ultimately dominated by the composition and the artist's conceptual idea (conceptual artist). Furthermore, it couldn't be easily replicated and couldn't be produced in this way or in series by any other artist. That was the goal. After much thought, testing, and creating prototypes, I had found a solution, my own. 

It was to be a gigantic building block concept that combined AI with digital and classical painting and integrated other art techniques such as collage, graphics, drawing, and street art (spray). It was important to me that the surface of the images closely resembled that of a smartphone touchscreen. That is, smooth and reflective. The latter, the reflection in the "screen," i.e., the image, was particularly important to me. The viewer should be able to see themselves and their surroundings (which always vary depending on where the image is displayed) in the image. This unites and blends the image and reflection individually. Ideal for the selfie-taking generation. And an analogy to the "mirroring" of user behavior by smartphones and the many apps that, in the background, create multifaceted reflections of our personalities from our data. The operating system and the apps can record far more data than we realize. User personalities are created that can have an impact for many years to come. 

The decision to stop painting on canvas with a brush was incredibly difficult for me. I love the wonderful structures that emerge on canvas with a brush or other techniques so much. Like, for example, the wonderful abstract expressionists with their free color fields and structures (such as Jackson Pollock (thick streaks), Helen Frankentaler (thin blobs), and many more). But this 'painting' was a thing of the past; today it has to be smooth. Superficially sterile, just like the screen of a smartphone or tablet. This led to an unusual aesthetic that doesn't initially look 'artistic'. 

But, I repeat, it had to be done: The art had to be behind screens, with and without AI. In my case, the screens were made of acrylic glass. This is the aesthetic of tomorrow: clean, eel-smooth, and wipeable. Screens are what hold the whole world in their hands and also in suspense. So, after a year of experimentation, the first 'screen on canvas' painting was created. I no longer painted with a brush, but composed the screens, which were printed, painted, or pasted on. Mounted on canvas. The possibilities of a modular system are vast; different images can emerge from the same screens. And multiple images can be interlocked or intertwined. For the painting "The Young Artificial Influencers of the World," 200 screens were ultimately used, but 400 were produced for the compositional possibilities. That's complex. No one will be able to create this painting with its 200 screens again, because AI is constantly evolving. The results will be more perfect, or not, but they won't be as good as they were in 2022. In the search for a concept that captures the spirit of the times, I have created and documented several thousand AI images during this time.