An AI-created image purporting to be a famous watercolor by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele has generated hundreds of thousands of page views, as well as outrage and alarm on X.
The image was posted by @lovedropx, an account with 287,000 followers and a vigorous reposter with a weakness for maudlin inspirational quotes. A depiction of a woman in a black dress and stockings, it is rendered in the style of a Schiele drawing and titled with the name of an actual watercolor, gouache, and crayon work by the artist from 1917.
While many of @lovedropsx’s followers (and perhaps @lovedropx themselves) appear to have been taken in by the misattributed Schiele, others aren’t having it. As pointed out in comments by irritated art-world readers, not only are the “model’s” makeup, hair, and nails out of the period, she also has six fingers. That, and as @BoreSevere notes on @nomadic_anais, the image is stripped of any of Schiele’s provocativeness.
This is not the first AI-generated image falsely attributed to Schiele to be posted on social media in recent months. Art Detective posted on Facebook in December, “Watch out for new AI creations ‘inspired by’ Egon Schiele. Some are disclosed as AI . . . but others aren’t. . . . This is a common phenomenon these days, since it’s extremely easy to generate AI [images] based on famous art.”
Ominously, the post has already amassed 280,000 views and more than 6,700 likes, heightening art world concern that fabricated content on social media is undermining art-historical truth. It now appears with added context written by readers.
