Girl with AI earrings sparks Dutch art controversy

At first glance it seems to be just a modern take on Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece "Girl with a Pearl Earring." But look more closely and things get a little strange.

Firstly, there are two glowing earrings in the image hanging in the Mauritshuis museum in the Dutch city of The Hague. And aren't those freckles on her face actually... a slightly inhuman shade of red?

That's because the work, one of several fan recreations replacing the 1665 original while it's on loan for a huge Vermeer show at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, was made using artificial intelligence (AI).

Its presence has sparked a fierce debate, with questions over whether it belongs in the hallowed halls of the Mauritshuis and whether it should be classed as art at all.

"It's controversial, so people are for it or against it," Mauritshuis press officer Boris de Munnick told AFP.

"The people who selected this, they liked it, they knew that it was AI, but we liked the creation. So we chose it, and we hung it."

Berlin-based digital creator Julian van Dieken submitted the image after the Mauritshuis asked people to send in their versions of the famous painting for an installation called "My Girl with a Pearl."

Van Dieken said he had used the AI tool Midjourney, which can generate complex pictures on the basis of a prompt, using millions of images from the internet, and Photoshop.

The Mauritshuis then chose it as one of five images out of 3,482 submitted by fans that would be printed and physically hung in the room where "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is normally housed.

"It's surreal to see it in a museum," van Dieken wrote on Instagram.

The budding artists ranged in age from three to 94, depicting the "Girl" in diverse styles ranging from a...