Reclaiming Integrity: Artists Return to Brisbane Portrait Prize to Counter AI Influence

• The Brisbane Portrait Prize allowed AI-generated art to compete for the main Lord Mayor’s prize, worth $50,000, in 2024, sparking global debate.
• Prominent artists, including Wiradjuri artist Birrunga and Walkley-winning photographer Russell Shakespeare, boycotted the prize, with Shakespeare comparing the inclusion of AI to "drugs in sport."
• Artist Jackie Ryan’s work The Catch, which uses generative AI software Krea, is a finalist, marking her evolution from manual photo editing to digital integration.
• First Nations artists Birrunga, Kane Brunjes, and Elysia Love-Anderson have returned to the prize to highlight "ancestral integrity," arguing that AI lacks cultural connection and generational knowledge.
• Photographer Glenn Hunt, a 2020 digital prize winner who led the 2024 boycott, is now a finalist with a portrait of Dean Clifford, aiming to create work that is the "opposite" of AI’s artificiality.
• BPP director Anna Reynolds states that the debate has shifted from whether to allow AI to how it is used as a creative tool, emphasizing human control and copyright compliance.

The current exhibition features works that highlight the diverse ways artists are engaging with technology and tradition. Among the finalists is Jackie Ryan’s piece The Catch, which depicts Australian comedian Alice Fraser in a red dress, poised above a claw machine. While Fraser was photographed on stage, the other figures—generic superheroes and 1950s housewives—were created using the generative AI software Krea.

Ryan views this as a natural progression in her career, which has long explored pop culture through various mediums. More than 15 years ago, she used image editing software to manually cut and paste photos of real people into a graphic novel series. This year, after photographing Fraser, she experimented with AI to encase her subject in a claw machine. The initial output was described as photorealistic yet unsettling, featuring doll-like figures standing stiffly inside a glass case. By refining prompts to include feminist tropes, messy pile-ups of figures, altered backdrops, and Ben Day dots, Ryan transformed the image. She emphasizes that the final product is not something one simply wakes up with; it requires deliberate artistic direction.

The gallery space itself is alive with preparation for the opening night. Artists are seen tacking a Lycra clown to the wall with entomology pins, while a charcoal portrait of Archie Moore hangs solemnly nearby. This portrait, Kith and Kin, won the 2024 Venice Biennale Golden Lion.

The BPP’s decision in 2024 to open its doors to AI-generated art, including the main Lord Mayor’s prize worth $50,000, occurred at a time when art prizes worldwide were grappling with similar technological conundrums. Many had previously given awards to AI works unwittingly. However, the BPP’s explicit acceptance of declared AI shocked and outraged many in the city’s arts scene.

Former winners publicly boycotted the award. Walkley-winning photographer Russell Shakespeare likened the inclusion of AI to allowing "drugs in sport." Birrunga, a former BPP packer’s prize winner, also boycotted in 2024 and again last year, along with his gallery’s artists. He stated that an AI piece is not art but decoration or illustration at best, lacking cultural content and connection to countless generations of practice. He described the "quick fix" mentality as poison to Indigenous culture and viewed the prize’s acceptance as a tacit green light for harvesting First Nations cultural intellectual property.

However, Birrunga believes the point has been made. This year, he and five First Nations artists his gallery represents chose to "reinsert ourselves," pitting their work against AI. They are painting self-portraits that speak to their "ancestral integrity," a quality Birrunga argues can never be replaced by software. "If you make a point and then ghost, then you just remove yourself from the narrative," he explains.

First Nations artists are using their return to the prize to emphasize the depth of knowledge that AI cannot replicate. Gunggari and Kabi Kabi painter Kane Brunjes’ Ancestral Integrity and Kamilaroi artist Elysia Love-Anderson’s Reflections now hang among the BPP finalists.

Love-Anderson explains that her work is rooted in the idea that everything comes from ancestors. She views AI as a significant problem because it cannot provide the knowledge passed down from family, Elders, and multiple generations. "It’s just fake," she states. "AI’s just really fake to me."

Photographer Glenn Hunt, who won the digital prize in 2020 but led the boycott in 2024, has also decided to enter again. He is a finalist this year with a portrait of Dean Clifford, who lives with epidermolysis bullosa, a rare and severe skin disease. Meta AI once compared Clifford’s appearance to a "zombie costume." Hunt aims to create something that is the opposite of AI’s artificiality. "You can’t get more real than he is," Hunt says. He notes the irony that when Clifford’s selfie went viral, many online believed it was AI-generated. "What a time to be alive," he remarks.

BPP director Anna Reynolds notes that the prize only accepts generative AI works that do not infringe on copyright, a rule introduced to regulate the emerging technology. She suggests that the binary argument about whether AI should be allowed is "kind of gone now." Instead, the conversation has become more sophisticated, focusing on how AI is used as a creative tool. The key issues are control, retaining human capital, and maintaining human creative control.

The prize exhibition will open to the public on Saturday, following the announcement of winners on Friday night. Of the 49 works in the main competition, Ryan’s is the only one to declare the use of generative AI. As AI continues to shift societal foundations, the ratio of AI to human art may change in years to come. However, for artists like Brunjes, certain values remain constant. "Regardless of AI, we’ve still got our integrity – and our artworks aren’t going anywhere," he says. "Our stories aren’t going anywhere."