The estate of Allen Ginsberg, the acclaimed American poet and countercultural icon, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to create new works based on his expansive literary archive. His 1955 poem “Howl”, which celebrates the subversion of societal norms, is widely credited for inspiring the Beat Generation. On August 10th, the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles will unveil a new exhibition titled “Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg”, featuring photographs from Ginsberg’s collection. In addition, the gallery will host a preview of “A Picture of My Mind: Poems Written by Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs”, a collection of poems generated by an AI trained using Ginsberg’s literary body of work.
The exhibition, developed in collaboration with non-fungible token (NFT) poetry gallery and digital community TheVERSEverse with support from the Tezos Foundation, utilizes an AI-powered camera that turns visual imagery into text. “Just as Ginsberg innovated with automated writing techniques and popular technologies, this collection of AI-generated poems taps the contemporary linguistic avant-garde to engage ritualistically, intuitively, and meaningfully with Ginsberg’s visual and poetic vernacular,” the gallery writes.
The development of AI has accelerated in recent months following the mainstream proliferation of popular tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT. AI tools have been created to help artists across genres and disciplines, from music to art to text-based designs. AI tools have also been used to replicate the styles of particular artists, both living and post-mortem, though there have been allegations of misappropriation of these tools to steal artists’ work without credit.