The story behind this painting is so sad! 😢

Now using AI we can complete what he couldn’t finish! ❤️ https://t.co/RuASoTfFdk pic.twitter.com/uAwM6SBUGW

— Donnel (@DonnelVillager) December 31, 2023

The celebrity graffiti artist Keith Haring died in 1990, at the age of 31, no doubt having completed only a fraction of the artwork he would have produced in a life a few decades longer. Upon first seeing his Unfinished Painting of 1989, one might assume that his early death is what stopped him from finishing it. In fact, painting only about a quarter of the canvas was his deliberate choice, intended to make a visual commentary on the AIDS epidemic that had claimed so many lives, and, not long thereafter, would claim his own. Presumably, it never occurred to anyone to “finish” Unfinished Painting — not before the age of artificial intelligence, anyway.

“Last summer, artist Brooke Peachley … posted a photo of the work on X” — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — “alongside a prompt asking others to respond with a visual art piece ‘that never fails to destroy [them] every time they see it,’ ” write Elaine Velie and Rhea Nayyar at Hyperallergic. “Over six months later, another user responded to the original post with a generative AI image that ‘completed’ Haring’s purposely half-painted work, writing, ‘now using AI we can complete what he couldn’t finish!’ ”

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