Ceci n'est pas un scarabée. The artwork and research draws a direct historical connection with Surrealism (Magritte) and Cubism (Picasso) and Dazzle (WOI optical camouflage) in the age of AI and Data.

These post-camouflage AI beetle patterns are generated with neural networks and evolutionary algorithms to fool and mislead artificial intelligence-enabled systems. The artist aims to develop a contemporary razzle-dazzle style capable of messing up labelling and metadata systems. The images look like a beetles for us but is seen through the electronic eye as, for example, a banana.

In a feature for ART PRESS, renowned French art critic and curator Dominique Moulin writes about AI Beetle: “Pattern recognition is a branch of artificial intelligence that Frederik de Wilde is investigating this year with his online exhibition Next Nature_Post Camouflage. As computer vision devices proliferate, far beyond the industries where they first appeared, he looks for ways to fool them into thinking up camouflages, and he does so using artificial neural networks combined with evolutionary algorithms. The three-dimensional beetles he adorns with the resulting camouflage patterns make it impossible to see them as the work of any machine vision device with artificial intelligence. To the human observer, they are still beetles. The machine no longer recognises them as beetles. Artificial intelligence is used here against itself, reinforcing our ability to look at what a machine cannot see. The still and moving images in the AI Beetle series, presented on the internet, thus belong to a larger body of work associated with counter-surveillance, in an era when artificial intelligence is used to serve widespread digital surveillance.

Another aspect De Wilde addresses with this work is the hot topic of AI and authorship: “The beetle is covered in new patterns created by an algorithm, but the algorithm is hacked, so it tricks itself. I do find that interesting, especially in this time of extinction because if this AI Beetle can survive better thanks to this pattern, who is the author of this new pattern?”