AI-generated art at museum will be identified, says curator

A Fredericton museum that has faced criticism for using images generated by artificial intelligence in an exhibit will take steps to let visitors know the material’s origins.

The six images in question, used to illustrate an exhibit on local Black history, were first displayed at the Fredericton Region Museum in August 2023 as part of the temporary Fredericton 175+ exhibit.

Curator Jennifer Dow, who also curated the Our Black Heritage exhibit, says she used NightCafé, a free AI art generator, and a “couple different platforms” to create the images because she had no budget and there were no existing photos of the people portrayed.

The Fredericton Region Museum.

The images became a part of Dow’s in-person walking tour, which in 2025 was offered only on request, although the room remained open to museumgoers.

“Visitors could have easily asked a staff member; it was never a secret that they are AI,” Dow said in an email.

However, David Peters, co-founder of the New Brunswick Black History Society, approved of Dow’s use of AI to illustrate the exhibit.

“Whatever the museum did, God bless them," he said.

“We as a Black history society in New Brunswick are behind them, because at least it promotes our history.”

Dow has composed a curator’s statement which will accompany the images. It has not yet been posted at the museum and could be subject to change: “The Fredericton Black History Walking Tour began as a personal passion project. I spent years collecting stories from Fredericton’s Black community and wanted to create images for you to see some of these people that only exist as a name in old documents. I want you to see them the way I picture them.

“I used an AI image generator to build visual representations for educational purposes. Each image is rooted in historical research and created from word prompts. They are not based on any existing artwork or photography,” she said in the statement. “These images were created to honour these incredible people and ensure their stories are not forgotten.”

Dow says she also intends to add the names to identify the people shown in the photos.

One of the photos, of Sabina Grant, is shown in a document at the museum detailing the Fredericton 175+ exhibit and identifies the image as created with AI.

The paragraph says Grant came to New Brunswick with Loyalists in 1783, where she worked as a washwoman in the Fredericton garrison.

“I honestly have to question if this became a story because of the world we live in and people not wanting to see Black history,” Dow said in an email, later adding, “from my experience doing this work I feel that the originator of the comments on the AI art is not coming from a good place.”

The images attracted a number of negative comments online.

“I am incredibly disappointed by the use of AI generated images in several of the galleries here. Especially when these images are being used in connection with and as storytelling for the already poorly documented history of Black Canadians,” said a recent Google review by Mathias M.

A nine-month-old review by peppertomb said, “enjoyed the rooms and historical artifacts, and it is a beautiful building. I personally found having alien memorabilia spilling into your black settlers’ historical spaces a little uncomfortable, and the use of AI art to generate photos of ‘olden times’ Black folk is insulting.”

For Peters, however, the use of AI to enhance the exhibit is not a problem.

“My understanding is that the Fredericton museum, or exhibition, is promoting Black history,” he said.

“They could not find images, so they’re taking up on AI to say, ‘here’s an image of a person that could have been this person’.”

Peters said that when he was telling local Black history in the 1960s, his solution to the lack of imagery was to colour Black faces onto whiteboards to put a face to the name, usually with no information about what they actually looked like.

He says that he researched a lot about Black inventors, and often the most information he had to work with was their patent numbers.

“If you want to look at it this way, back 60 some years ago, I was AI,” he said.

Cynthia Wallace-Casey, the museum’s exhibits chair, told Brunswick News that “it depends upon the choices of the curator as to whether they think it’s necessary to employ artificial intelligence.”

Dow is a sixth-generation descendant of early Black settler Solomon Kendall, and had spent five years researching local Black history, according to an article she published in the NB Media Co-op in 2020.

“Our baseline is that it must be based upon sound historical research, and it must not promote hate,” said Wallace-Casey.

“Those (AI-generated) images are meant to fill a visual gap when no authentic photographs exist,” said Dow, adding it was the only time she had ever used an AI image generator.

The lack of signage for the names and histories of those represented, and for the fact the images were AI generated, Dow says, was “just an oversight.”

MORE AI AT THE MUSEUM?

Wallace-Casey referenced two more exhibits she said also used AI.

One was Dow’s Our Black Heritage exhibit, which uses an interactive screen to tell museumgoers more about early Black settlers to the region.

The other is the Pointe SainteAnne exhibit, dedicated to the Acadian settlement that predated Fredericton and lasted from 1692 to 1759, where Wallace-Casey said that “visitors experience voices from the past thanks to talking heads developed as artificial intelligence.”

Otherwise, she said the museum has done what they can to engage with artists “from all walks of life and of all interests as often as we possibly can.”

However, Alan Edwards - who built the virtual-reality displays for the Pointe Sainte-Anne exhibit, assisted with the video work for the Our Black Heritage exhibit, and is now employed by the New Brunswick Museum in information technology - neither of his contributions used AI.

“We had a big touchscreen that had all sorts of interactive things. You know, you could call up movies and we had a bunch of interviews with people about their family history,” said Edwards about Our Black Heritage, adding it also had census records from Gagetown to Woodstock for folks who wanted to learn more about their history.

Seeing the images Dow had added in the next room over, he said, “I can tell this is AI slop.”

Edwards said he used character-creating software Reallusion and 3D animating software iClone to create the talking heads in the Pointe Sainte-Anne exhibit – neither of which are AI.

“Basically (iClone) uses the waveform of the soundtrack to move their lips, but then you have to add additional, sort of, secondary animation to that to move the head around and move the eyes, blink, and things like that to make them look a little bit more like they’re not plastic models.”

Another photo that came under fire for AI use was from another Black history exhibit, depicting the No. 2 Construction Battalion, Canada’s first all-Black military unit from back when the Canadian military was segregated in World War I.

However, Alena Krasnikova, the museum’s executive director, said that image was created by an artist, not AI.

“We engaged Chris Thomas, a professional mixed media artist,” she said in an email.

“He was fairly compensated for his original illustration,” said Krasnikova.

“While Chris chose to work with digital tools as part of his process, to our knowledge no AI technology was used in creating these pieces. His chosen medium is part of his artistic expression, and we respect his autonomy in that regard.”

AN AI EXPERT’S PERSPECTIVE

According to Aaloak Jaswal, an AI researcher at the University of New Brunswick, the ethics of using artificial intelligence in a museum display are complicated.

“There are clear risks when AI images aren’t labeled, in that many people believe they’re real when they’re not. So, transparency is absolutely key,” Jaswal, innovation director at UNB’s Research Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, said in an email.

“Without low-cost tools like AI, exhibits like this might never come to life at all,” he said, adding that he was not familiar with the exhibit in question. The Canadian Museums Association is in the process of updating its ethics guidelines to include an AI component, according to a 2023 report.

“When it comes to the task of running a museum, AI can play a role in mitigating one of the most critical pain points for many Canadian museums – capacity and funding constraints,” the report said, while adding, “museums must ensure that AI training be made available to all museum staff so that AI adoption does not lead to doomsday scenarios of mass layoffs and the creation of a tech elite within the sector.”

“I think AI-generated art in museums is a double-edged sword. It carries risks around accuracy, representation, and missed opportunities for living artists, but it also opens up possibilities for small institutions to tell stories that might otherwise never be shared,” said Jaswal.

Jaswal wrote in bolded letters in his email that AI images “should have been disclosed,” adding that is especially the case when “details like jumbled signage make it obvious they aren’t historically accurate.”

“As we move forward, we’re going to see more and more of this, so I think it’s important that these conversations are had now,” he said.