[[{“value”:”
WICKER PARK — For more than a decade, Wintrust Bank has earned good will by offering nonprofit groups the opportunity to raise awareness via murals that adorn the bank’s highly-visible property along the Kennedy Expressway.
The Wintrust Mural Building‘s rotating public art has usually been admired daily — until now.
The building currently features an organization that commissioned AI-generated art, which was hung about nine weeks ago. Since then, passersby have taken to Instagram and Reddit to slam the use of AI on a mural that would typically be created by local artists.
Multiple posters decried the “AI slop” and complained that artificial intelligence was stealing jobs from human artists.
“Chicago! I hate this billboard more every time I drive past it,” wrote one Redditer. “So hard on the eyes, it’s a safety hazard.”
“I hope this results in an updated policy for your murals,” another commenter added. “The mural project is a great service for the community, but when you promote AI instead of real artists, it’s not a good look for the bank or the organizations you support.”
Wintrust does not hire the artists whose work appears on the building. Instead, it offers the real estate to local nonprofits, which then collaborate with artists to create murals highlighting the agencies’ good works. Since 2014, the Mural Building has featured more than 50 organizations — including the Chicago Public Library, the Pullman Porter Museum, the Chicago Children’s Museum, After School Matters and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
The current artwork was intended to highlight Hope Ignites Chicago, a nonprofit whose mission is “to guide and nurture young people in need to become college-educated, career-ready, and community-minded men and women.”
The group’s work is important, and it’s unfortunate that the use of AI has distracted from that, artists and commuters told Block Club. Hope Ignites did not respond to critics in an Instagram post about the artwork, and has not returned Block Club’s requests for comment.
Humboldt Park resident and artist Cristian Roldán Aponte was hired to design the mural that will replace the Hope Ignites one — and does not include AI.
“People see AI as part of a way to cut costs, but a machine can never substitute for an artist,” Roldán Aponte told Block Club. His mural celebrating the Community Investment Corporation will be up in the next couple weeks.
“All the things that belong to humanity — like critical thinking, creativity — cannot be replaced by a computer,” he said. “A computer can take data and condense it into a summary, but it’s not as innovative as a person. Murals are storytelling. What authentic and unique story can a machine tell you? It doesn’t have a soul. It didn’t make mistakes that are part of the flavor of their humanity.”
With artwork hanging on three sides of the building, thousands of commuters see the art every day, whether they’re traveling into or away from the Loop.
Also, while most people think of murals as artwork painted onto a large-scale surface, the Wintrust infrastructure is different. Due to the constantly rotating nature of the program, the building’s art is pre-printed onto vinyl mesh, which is then hung on the bricks.
Wintrust has no plans to ban AI in future murals, a spokesperson said in a statement.
“Wintrust is proud to donate space on the Mural Building to our non-profit partners to showcase their efforts,” Wintrust spokesperson Amy Yuhn wrote. “The non-profit partner being featured on the Mural Building is responsible for creating the artwork displayed, and they are free to go about that in the best way for them. In some cases, as with the current mural, that means using computer-generated imagery for cost efficiency. To us, the means of production doesn’t diminish the importance of the story and the work they do.”
South Shore artist Damon Lamar Reed said he noticed the new mural while driving past it. He told Block Club, “I rode by twice. I turned to my wife and said, ‘It looks like they definitely used AI.’ It had a generic feel to it.”
An artist for 25 years with extensive experience creating large-scale works, Reed created a design in 2023 to celebrate the Red Cross for the Wintrust Mural Building.
He said Wintrust should “definitely” avoid hanging AI art in the future: “To me, it seems to me that the idea with the Wintrust mural is, ‘Let’s hire a Chicago artist to do it.’
“I’m not against using AI as a tool,” he continued. “I use it sometimes if I’m trying to find a reference photo, and I need somebody in a particular position or doing a particular action. Then I can draw or paint that. I flip it, so I’m still creating something original.”
Reed drew an analogy to another creative industry that was upended by digital technology: “You know, when streaming started with music, there were kind of no rules to it. Should the artist get the money? Should the record label get the money? It’s a similar thing now: AI is part of the mural world, so we gotta figure out how to navigate it.”
Although Roldán Aponte said he finds the use of artificially generated art disappointing, he understands why organizations are tempted to use it.
“People see AI as part of a way to cut costs, he said.
That said, he enjoyed his experience designing for the Wintrust Mural Building — in large part because the organization that hired him didn’t cut costs.
A self-taught artist with a history of vibrant public projects, he responded in the spring to a call for design submissions from the Community Investment Corporation, a local nonprofit lender dedicated to affordable rental housing. The CIC committed to paying five finalists $1,000 to further develop more comprehensive design proposals. As the winner, Roldán Aponte also receives a $9,000 artist fee.
“It was a very ethical way to do this kind of work,” Roldán Aponte said. “This is one of the reasons I decided to apply: The CIC had the very important process of acknowledging the time you spent to create a design and develop a concept. It’s work, but a lot of time people expect you to do this work for free, just for the hope [you’ll get the job]. The hope doesn’t pay the bills.”
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
“}]]