Social media calls out Riverfest for choosing festival artwork that utilized AI technology

For a toad, he’s pretty chill — calmly puffing on a pipe that emits bubbles as he floats the Arkansas River on a lily pad.

But the tranquil little toad — the centerpiece of the winning design for the Riverfest 2024 Poster Artwork Contest — has become the center of controversy on social media, surprising the sponsors of the contest and dispiriting its winner.

Wichi-Toad, as he’s been dubbed, was created by local graphic designer Dave Allen using the assistance of Artificial Intelligence, a fact that was immediately apparent to many art observers in the community. And as soon as the new poster art was revealed, they hopped online to express their displeasure.

Among the nearly 200 comments made on the festival’s Facebook page since Tuesday:

“Are we really using AI for this? There’s plenty of artists in and around Wichita. I’m ashamed.”

“What a slap in the face to our local artists who would’ve gladly put time and effort in.”

“So wrong for an art competition to have AI generated ‘art.’”

“Please do better Wichita Riverfest. This is embarrassing.”

On Wednesday morning, Wichita Riverfest communications director Jennifer Remsberg said that festival officials were caught off guard by the reaction to the poster unveiling — usually one of the more innocuous parts of the annual festival ritual.

A panel of five judges looked at 20 submissions for this year’s contest, which awards the winner $4,000 and the chance to have their art displayed on all the festival’s publicity materials, including the admission buttons. The panel chose Allen’s design because members felt it was fun, different and best fit the theme.

Even though festival critics are always ready to share dissenting opinions, especially online, no one at the festival was expecting such a strong reaction, Remsberg said.

“It’s kind of fascinating to me that the poster, of all things, of a 52 year-old event that is about as traditional as you can get has all the sudden become a jumping off point for the conversation around AI,” she said. “Who would have thought?”

Tool or crutch?

Remsberg said that after the backlash began, she consulted with Allen — a retired graphic designer and former art director with more than 30 years of experience — to find out exactly how he’d created the artwork for the poster. He said that yes, he had used AI artwork as the basis for the toad, but he then manipulated the image using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to make it his own.

He got the bubbles from a piece of stock photography and also manipulated those, and he adopted the Wichita skyline from a photo he took, again using Illustrator and Photoshop to manipulate them.

The result, she said, is an original piece of artwork that utilizes tools available to all designers. The entry didn’t break any contest rules.

“There is absolutely original design and graphic design and illustration in the poster,” she said, adding that the festival staff quickly learned that “there are many, many, many opinions about AI.”

On Wednesday, Allen said he was distressed about the controversy. Though he’s not big on social media, he was made aware of the conversation that was brewing on Tuesday evening.

His first emotion was fear that he’d caused trouble for the Riverfest, he said. The second was confusion.

Allen said he conceptualized the idea of the frog character on his own, then was “playing around” with AI to see what he could come up with. It was the first time he’d used AI in that way, he said.

“I used it as a basis for my design, but then I had to go in there and adjust a lot of things,” he said. “It certainly is not something that’s perfect out of the chute, and I wanted to customize it to fit Wichita.”

AI is just another tool artists have at their disposal, Allen said, and it’s not a fad. The technology is here to stay, and he fully expects that someday, AI could even make graphic designers obsolete.

“That’s going to come, and whether we like it or not, it is going to happen,” he said. “I’m sure in a year from now, it will be way better than it is today and continue to be that way for sure.”

Allen said he has entered the contest twice before in the past but is a first-time winner. The last thing he wanted to do, he said, was stir up controversy.

“I feel bad about the whole thing, and I certainly didn’t want to do anything that would reflect poorly upon the Riverfest at all,” he said. “Nothing like that was ever intended.”

Something totally different

Local artist Chris Garcia, owner of the local mural and clothing company Brickmob, was one of the judges on the panel that picked the poster winner this year. The panel also included two employees from contest sponsor Emprise Bank, the chairman of the Wichita Riverfest Board of Directors and the general chair of the festival’s Operations Committee.

The panel recognized during judging that Allen’s entry included elements of AI, Garcia said. And it wasn’t the only one. A few other entrants also appeared to have used AI as a tool.

As an artist, Garcia said, he’s never used AI. But after reviewing all of the entries in this year’s poster contest, he said, the panel agreed that Allen’s was the best.

“They wanted to embrace something new,” he said of the panel. “They wanted it to have a different look and feel from what’s been done.”

And although he understands how the winner got social media fired up, in this case, critics are off base, he said. Allen is a local artist, and he used tools available in Adobe to create his art. It’s not as though he just clicked a button and had a finished product.

Garcia said the whole debate reminded him of when photography was a new medium and people declared that it wasn’t “art” because all it took was the press of a button. Also, he said, non-artists and people not as aware of the AI debate all seemed to love the new poster, which also elicited several positive online comments.

Will the festival change the rules in coming years and prohibit AI assistance in the poster contest? Maybe, Garcia said. Remsberg also said the festival will discuss whether the rules need updating.

But Allen did nothing wrong in creating the image, and the committee was not wrong to choose it, he said.

“It’s fun and it’s cute and it’s something totally different than what’s ever been done before,” he said. “People just get hung up on a particular thing that skews their opinion of it without giving it a chance... In the end, it’s just one poster. A local artist was supported, end of story. We’ll move on and we’ll do something different next year.”